The challenges and opportunities for the future of European research and innovation in the transport sector, with view to the new Framework Programme Horizon Europe (HE), were debated at the European Conference of Transport Research Institutes (ECTRI), which celebrated its 15th year of existence. For the occasion, a special event was organized in Brussels on 12 December 2018.
Distinguished personalities were brought together to discuss how to move forward the ECTRI vision to achieve a sustainable and multimodal transport system. Viewpoints were given in form of brief scientific speeches by prominent ECTRI researchers. These were followed by a panel discussion. The ERA Chair Holder Prof. Tatiana Kováčiková contributed to both. Her presentation addressed the topic of increasing research excellence in ITS across Europe through the lenses of the experience of the ERA Chair project ERAdiate at the University of Žilina. Tatiana concluded her presentation with pointing to lessons learnt: ”There are three main lessons learnt from the project: 1. Critical mass of skills is key for a success of the ERA Chair project, 2. Strong commitment of the institution’s management is required to achieve structural changes and 3. The ERA Chair project is rather evolution than revolution…”.
Dr. Meike Jipp from DLR in Germany gave a presentation entitled “Design for acceptance: chances of digitalization and automation for user-friendly public transportation“. She underlined that the technology can be accepted only if human needs are considered. Prof. Ludovic Leclerc from IFSTTAR in France, the ERC Consolidator, presented “Multiscale and multimodal traffic modelling approaches for sustainable management of urban mobility“. He presented the ERC MAGnUM project, in which a variety of models capturing driver behaviours at the different urban scales are applied to design efficient and green traffic management strategies.
The high level panel discussion with the participation of Signe Ratso, Deputy Director-General for Research and Innovation, European Commission DG RTD, Young Tae Kim, Secretary General, International Transport Forum, OECD, Gunnar Lindberg, Director, Transport Economics Institute TØI, Norway and Tatiana Kováčiková, ERA Chair Holder, ERAdiate project on Intelligent Transport Systems, UNIZA, Slovakia was oriented towards the key Research and Innovation challenges to deliver sustainable and multimodal mobility in Europe and their implications for the EU’s future R&I programme, Horizon Europe.
Tatiana pointed out that sustainable and multimodal mobility is a complex system, for which all elements must go through transition: knowledge and technology, policies and regulations, culture and user habits, institutions and tools, industry and markets, and therefore coordinated research on all these topics is needed. She also said that Horizon Europe missions need to be selected in a way that they will make a true difference in society and scientific excellence must be the primary selection criterion across the whole HE, missions included.
The event, moderated by the journalist Ms Jacki Davis, was attended by a selected audience of around 160 personalities, representatives from all sectors of European transport as well as ECTRI Members and associated or cooperating Organisations.
The event was concluded by the newly elected ECTRI President Evangelos Bekiaris, Director of The Centre for Research and Technology, Hellenic Institute of Transport, Greece.
More information can be found here.