California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has agreed a US$5 million contract with the University of California Berkley’s earthquake engineering department’s bridge research programme.

The contract with the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) covers seven priority topics: maintenance and sustainability; new materials; bridge modelling and analysis; accelerated bridge construction; performance-based earthquake engineering, and bridge and system reliability; foundations and walls; and intelligent design tools/bridge design aids.

Caltrans will select projects for the programme through a PEER-administered request-for-proposal process. The programme is open to researchers from all public core institutions.