Overview
Predit is a national programme to encourage innovation and co-ordinate research. This programme aims at encouraging the creation of transportation systems that are economically and socially more effective, safer, more energy-efficient and more environmentally friendly. The third Predit programme was launched in 2002. It is marked by a specific effort put on goods transportation, energy and environmental issues, including the greenhouse effect, as well as diversified research on safety.
Predit 3 has three general objectives:
- to ensure the sustainability of passenger and goods transport
- to improve the safety of transportation systems
- to reduce environmental impacts and contribute to the fight against the greenhouse effects.
Predit 3 is based on 11 fields of research, known as operational groups (Groupes Opérationnels: GO):
GO 1. Mobility, territories and sustainable development: Knowledge of movement practices; use of work and leisure time; criteria for sustainable development; car dependency; evolution of actors' roles; social issues.
GO 2. Mobility services: Services and technologies for neighbourhood mobility; inter-mobility in urban areas; inter-city transport.
GO 3. New knowledge for safety: Conditions involved when taking safety into account in terms of issues, data and knowledge production; behaviour faced with risks; health and safety.
GO 4. Technologies for safety: Control-command of controlled transport; driving aids and support for infrastructure operation; technologies for safer behaviour and for a better perception of the environment and risks.
GO 5. Logistics and transport of goods: Public policies and logistics organisations; goods in cities; reverse logistics; social issues in freight transportation.
GO 6. Technologies for goods transportation: Service quality of non road-transport; flow optimisation and management; intermodality; security of people and goods.
GO 7. Energy and environmental impact: Air pollution at a local and regional scale, the Greenhouse effect; noise; impacts on ecosystems; assessment and management of externalities.
GO 8. Clean and energy-saving vehicles: Environmental performance of thermal engines; alternative energies; electric and hybrid vehicles.
GO 9. Integration of information and communication systems: Integration and implementation of remote and localisation systems; evaluation surveys for projects concerning security; mobility management.
GO 10. Vehicles and infrastructure: Integration and assembling of existing technologies, traffic in constrained areas; intelligent vehicles and infrastructure; vehicles of the future.
GO 11. Transportation policies: Tools to assess policies; prospective, economics and sociology of innovation.
In addition to the above, a 'common actions' group covers Franco-German co-operation, in particular the DEUFRAKO programme, which is both within the French Predit programme and the German 'Mobilität und Verkehr' (Mobility and Transport) programme.
The GOs (operational groups) draw up calls for tender and value and label proposals. The project founders (ministries and agencies) decide on projects and the operation
Funding
The six main funding organisations are the four ministries involved in the programme and the two governmental agencies. their contribution distribution is the following:
- Ministry responsible for transport: EUR 69m
- Ministry responsible for industry: EUR 68.6m
- Ministry responsible for research: EUR 54.1m
- Ministry responsible for the environment: EUR 11m
- ADEME: EUR 61m
- OSEO anvar: EUR 41m.
The public budget is about EUR 305 million. Co-funding of projects by industry, local authorities, other ministries and from European institutions is in addition to this.
Projects are awarded through calls for proposals, spontaneous proposals, direct single orders and through federative actions. Predit funding of projects is between 20% and 80%, depending on the nature of the action and the status of the funding beneficiary.