GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The poor conditions of roads in the Gaza Strip have pushed three Palestinian young female engineers who recently graduated from the Islamic University in Gaza City to focus their efforts on the industry of self-healing asphalt with metal scrap. Their project came as part of their university program in a bid to find solutions to the rough roads.

On May 9, the project won first prize in the scientific innovation category of the Nasser Bin Hamad (NBH) International Youth Creativity Award in Bahrain. The three engineers are Hadeel Abu Aisha, 22, Khadija Ramlawi, 22, and Nour Hassan, 21 — all graduates of the Civil Engineering Department at the Islamic University in Gaza.

“With time, cracks start to show on asphalt, and the traditional solution would be to pave the road every time, which is a costly option as 1 kilometer of asphalt costs about $1 million [in Gaza] because of the high cost of raw materials resulting from the restrictions imposed by Israel on imports. Our idea comes with a better choice,” Abu Aisha told Al-Monitor.

“Our idea is based on a self-healing process of the cracks in roads by adding iron fibers extracted from metal scrap to the asphalt, which is a mixture of bitumen and gravel, when paving the road for the first time,” she said. She said that adding iron fibers protects asphalt against degradation and eventual structural failure.