Enhancing the transfer of Intelligent Transportation System innovations to the market

Final Report Summary - T-TRANS (Enhancing the transfer of Intelligent Transportation System innovations to the market)

T-TRANS project main objective has been to provide information on innovation mechanisms for the Intelligent Transport Systems domain, encouraging and facilitating an accelerated market deployment of related innovative products and services. In order to achieve this objective...

Executive Summary:

T-TRANS project main objective has been to provide information on innovation mechanisms for the Intelligent Transport Systems domain, encouraging and facilitating an accelerated market deployment of related innovative products and services.

In order to achieve this objective, the project partners have carried out an extensive analysis of the current situation and activity in the ITS area, streamlining the key factors influencing in the innovation chain for the selected 4 case studies, and achieving a better understanding of their market potential.

During the first phase of the project there was an in-depth information gathering on present EU transport research framework, with special focus to ITS. This activity was followed by the definition of an exhaustive but synthetic map of the technological context for the applications analyzed during the project, which allowed enhancing the understanding of the relationships among various ITS areas, applications and technologies by developing an ITS ontology which links ITS applications and technologies based on the study of the four case studies, and is general enough to be valid across different transport modes. Moreover, the ITS ontology paved the way for a technology roadmap exercise while assuring that a coherent approach to the case studies was taken, so that valuable information on technological parameters could be provided.

Building up on previous results on the technological parameters, the consortium analyzed the current market size and drivers, while analyzing the innovation chains in the 4 case test studies for particular key impact applications-technologies aiming at creating a complete understanding of the ITS framework and context.

During the second phase of the project, T-TRANS consortium has developed commercialization models for each case study to accelerate innovation diffusion to the market. A robust set of guidelines on ITS to European decision-makers has been drafted and proposed, based on an in depth analysis of the innovation governance parameters for ITS and qualitative analysis performed at country level.

During its implementation, T-TRANS project has created and enhanced the operation of three pilot g-local communities of interests (glocal CIM) in the regions of Central Macedonia (Greece), Galicia (Spain) and Latvia. The main objective has been to build-up and launch pilot localised initiatives in order to strengthen the innovation chain through the analysis both of the already operating innovation support networks (with special focus on transport and ITS domains) and the capabilities of end users to access the expected business opportunities of the case studies applications. Furthermore, these pilots are envisaged to be the seed of an EU ITS e-Innovation Network aimed to globalize the value chain of transport innovations between the engaging partners at EU level, rather than focus on each internal national market of each network.

The proposed communities of interest have been focused on: interconnecting existing synergies between each country/region, under the umbrella of T-TRANS project; defining strategies in order to optimize the acquisition and access of innovative R&D results and technology ITS related solutions; acting as initiators to the creation of the proposed ITS Innovation Network.

The project has been finalized by offering a compilation of of recommendations to diverse stakeholders for ITS innovation commercialization, in an effort to provide valid guidelines to support the development of a comprehensive strategy for ITS deployment in Europe.

Project Context and Objectives:

“Enhancing the transfer of Intelligent Transport System innovations to the market” (T-TRANS) is a Support Action (SA) funded under the FP7 horizontal activities for the implementation of the transport program and is specifically focused on theme TPT.2012.3-2, which aims at bringing innovative products and services to the market by the analysis of pathways and best conditions for innovation, within the domain “Strengthening the European research area, encouraging participation and fostering innovation”.

The project main objective is to provide information on innovation mechanisms for the Intelligent Transport Systems domain, encouraging and facilitating an accelerated market deployment of related innovative products and services. Therefore, T-TRANS core outcome has been an increased understanding of ITS innovation processes.

The focus on ITS was determined according to a context of globalization that makes ITS key technological area and a continuous source of innovation, bringing out robust added value and competitiveness to the whole transport sector and being an endless source for technology commercialization and new business opportunities. After an in depth analysis of the current activity in the ITS sector, the consortium verified that even if the role of ITS as key enabler of innovation was widely acknowledged at EU level, and the potentials of ITS already considered as an integral part of the Common Transport Policy, there were many blind spots with regards of how ITS technologies diffuse in the economy and industry and, moreover, there was the need for a coordinated ITS infrastructure and innovation support in Europe to maximize their potential and pave the way for a large deployment in the near future. These barriers were strongly related to the fact that ITS significantly impact the current transport businesses and cultures, questioning established transport habits. This large impact, together with the high level of fragmentation of the ITS domain, are at the time, the main asset but also the main challenge for bringing ITS innovations to the market, since those require structural adaptations from the transport sector.

In order to achieve the project global objective, the first step implemented already at proposal setting stage was to break down the immense landscape of ITS (systems, applications, technologies, products...) into four case studies. The selection of those was carried out according to identified and validated European Commission roadmaps for Intelligent Transport Systems research, current trends in the area and relevant priorities identified by EU initiatives (such as the Strategic Transport Technology Plan). It was also a key point to consider the core competences required by the consortium members.

The T-TRANS project case studies can be summarized as follows:

▪ Smart grid: connection, charging and storage of energy. Efficient use of intelligent control systems for battery and network management. Smart integration of electric vehicles into the distribution level networks by means of information and communication technologies.

▪ Revenue management technologies for freight transport. Gradual application of revenue management in air cargo market in terms of product-oriented and price-oriented demands.

▪ Revolution in intermodal transport units: Intelligent inter-modality. Key technologies for Intelligent Transport Units (ITUs) to increase efficiency, sustainability and transparency of logistic chains with real time information. Advanced information services for freight transportation in Europe with intelligent cargo units that are able to interact with the surrounding environment and autonomously make context-aware decisions.

▪ Rail network technological system wide approach. Deployment of new technologies to efficiently gain capability in the European rail network, thus providing opportunity to fulfill the increasing freight traffic demands.

Therefore, the assessment of the market commercialization of research has been performed on the base of four preselected case studies, with a holistic approach that includes the mapping of instruments supporting commercialization of research and technologies, the identification of the market drivers for transport innovation and of the channels and options for the commercialization of research.

T-TRANS has implemented a comprehensive analysis of the transport and ITS innovation chains, identifying in the specific case studies, the stages of technology development, the main drivers and barriers while deepening the understanding on the interactions of the diversity of stakeholders involved.

The specific project objectives as stated in the Annex I have been progressively met:

- The study of different applications of ITS, detecting the features of the innovation chain of the respective domains. Achieved by a tailorization of the Technological Innovation System analysis approach, which has supported a robust identification of key factors and actors influencing the performance in commercializing transport and ITS innovations, while detecting and defining the innovation chains for all 4 case studies.

- The analysis of the ITS market, evaluating the evolution for specific applications of the case studies and beyond. This specific objective has been achieved by an in depth analysis of market drivers, barriers, trends and evolution.

- The proposal and validation of a systemic approach for technology commercialization strategy analysis in the ITS field. Achieved by a modeling exercise based on the technology commercialization approach of Goldsmith which has allowed to guide the market pathways of diverse applications for each case study, assessing their market feasibility and further understanding the complexity of ITS commercialization considering opportunities and threats, market and business processes from an integrated point of view.

- Provision of best practices and guidelines for ITS innovation commercialization, which has been a consolidated result of all the activity of the project and specially assessed in diverse seminars with strong interaction with key stakeholders.

- Creation and operation of ITS Innovation Network nodes, gathering key actors of the innovation chain in regions of EU27 with weak innovation support chain. The established pilot glocal communities of interest to market in Galicia (Spain), Central Macedonia (Greece) and Latvia have been put in action, attracting more than sixty entities, representing the business section, the academia and the government, enrolled in the pilot operation of the T-TRANS e-innovation network and participated in all the activities of the three pilot glocal CIM.

- Overall strengthening of the innovation and cooperation for the ITS domain and dissemination of results.

T-TRANS project has effectively achieved all its objectives, contributing to provide a clearer view on the current state of the art of EU transport research developing a clear and unambiguous understanding with regards existing initiatives on the ITS domain.

Moreover, the project has successfully built a synthetic map of technological context for the ITS based on the 4 case studies, while contributing to assess further developments in ITS key areas. T-TRANS project has deepened the understanding of the market drivers for ITS innovation in order to accelerate diffusion of innovations by: analyzing past selected innovations, suggesting economic model of innovation from public research to transport market, identifying the innovation chains transferring technologies to market for different key ITS applications, comparing innovation diffusion processes in the EU and US, and deploying and in depth market and macroeconomic impact analysis. Moreover, the project has compiled technology commercialization strategies and has deployed a methodology to model the commercialization pathway of mature technologies of the selected case studies.

By effectively launching pilot localized initiatives in pre-selected EU regions in the form of Glocal communities of interest (multistakeholder composition, specially focused towards SMEs operating in the ITS area and innovation support system actors), T-TRANS has set the seed for an ITS innovation network that in the near future might be able to foster inter-sectoral and international cooperation EU wide in an open innovation platform scheme.

The project methodology has efficiently combined intense desktop analysis with constant survey and feedback from a number of stakeholders including:

- 9 partner organizations of T-TRANS consortium

- 17 associated members of the T-TRANS Stakeholder Advisory Board, representing key industry players, ITS industry associations, end user associations and key academia and research (Motorola Solutions, Boeing Research and Technology Europe, ITS Spain, ITS Germany, Hellenic Institute of Transport, Coventry University, Railforum, Logistik Initiative Hamburg, Steinbeis Europa Zentrum, Spanish Maritime Technology Platform, University of Boras, Novanda, MTorres group, Latvian Academy of Science, General Association of Ports in Schleswig-Holstein, Galician Automotive Technology Centre, Association of Information and Telecommunication companies Northern Greece).

- Over 90 SMEs, multinationals, research driven institutes and associations participated in the G-local CIMs, seminars and market surveys.

Project Results:

3.1. Overview

The T-TRANS project is based on two key pillars, Intelligent Transport System technology and applications, and Innovation Network operation. Thus, the project was divided operatively into seven work packages, five technical and two related with transversal activities (management and dissemination). Regarding the technical work packages, those were part of 4 project phases, which have been effectively implemented since project launching in September 2012. The work implemented can be summarized as follows:

Phase 1 (Data collection and Innovation Chain Analysis) involved three work packages (WP2, WP3 and WP4) and focused initially in gathering information on present EU transport research framework, with special focus to ITS. On a second step, an exhaustive but synthetic map of the technological context was performed for the applications analyzed during the project. Building up on previous results, a third step involved market experts of the consortium to analyze the current market size and drivers for each test case, while analyzing the innovation chains in the 4 case test studies for particular key impact applications-technologies.

Both WP2 and WP3 were implemented during the first project year bringing out several key results in the definition of a comprehensive technology map and roadmap for ITS (D3.1 and D3.2) and summarizing EU transport research with particular focus to ITS (D2.1).

WP4 has been the central work package of the project, launched in the fourth month of the project and operative all the way through until the 20th month, it has supported the implementation of 5 deliverables, from an exhaustive analysis of past innovations in the transport sector (D4.1) to an exhaustive Identification of the innovation chains transferring technology to the market for different Intelligent Transport System (D4.2), Comparison of the innovation diffusion processes of ITS in the European Union and in the United States (D4.3), Analysis of the European market of each case study combining a general market survey and another concerning the key stakeholders, plus an evaluation of the European market potential of each case study by 2020 (D4.4), Analysis on how the innovation governance is organized in the ITS sector and proposing a set of robust guidelines on ITS to European decision-maker in four sub-sectors inspired in the T-TRANS case studies (Electro-mobility sector; Air cargo sector; Intermodal freight transport sector; Railway transport sector (D4.5).

Based on the information gathered in Phase 1, Phase 2 (Innovation modeling for enhancing the transfer to market of the different specific applications) has developed commercialization models for each case study to accelerate innovation diffusion to the market. The activities linked to this phase were linked to WP5 implementation: the organization of two seminars devoted to discuss the complexities of the technology commercialization procedures and to propose commercialization strategies for the applications selected from each case study (D5.1). Moreover, a number of recommendations and approaches for improving the deployment of ITS at EU level based on all previous stages key outcomes of the project has been performed (D5.2).

Phase 3 (Innovation Network operation) focuses since the very beginning of the project on launching the ITS Innovation Network, starting with the pilots in the pre-selected G-local CIMs and by means of implementing WP6. As a major activity and output of the whole project, Phase 3 is highly interconnected with the rest of stages, getting the information coming from Phase 1 and being a key factor for the success of Phase 2. Partners in the regions where the G-local are implemented have been in charge of defining the existing innovation support systems, contacting main actors in the region (both at innovation support and Transport sector areas) and gather formal compromises to participate in the Network setting. WP6 has been extremely successful and during this project period has effectively achieved the original key objectives such as the establishment of the pilot multi-stakeholders G-local CIMs in the three regions and beyond, the definition of the structure of the T-TRANS network and its pilot operation (linked to D6.1, D6.2 and D6.3).

Phase 4 has concentrated on all Dissemination, Communication and Liaison activities of the project, centralized under Work Package 7. Project implementation has effectively achieved the communication amongst project partners, the effective use of diverse project and external dissemination tools and the increase of project visibility through specific project means and extensive presence and participation in external related forums. The project website, templates, dissemination material, press releases and newsletters were provided and the final project event was organized.

Within Work Package 1 all activities related to management and co-ordination were combined. Reports and deliverables were submitted timely. Work progress and project management board meetings were organized following the schedule approved in Annex I, and all relevant issues regarding day to day project management, financial and administrative were successfully dealt and fulfilled. The communication and everyday work kept the project smoothly running and supported effective and quality based activity and cooperation throughout the project implementation.The specific activities will be described in detail in the following chapters of this report.

3.2. WP2 Analysis of present EU transport Research framework

Work Package (WP) 2 “Analysis of present EU transport research framework” serves as a basis for the whole T-TRANS project by illustrating the main policies and initiatives that foster research and innovation at the European and national level, with an obvious special focus on ITS.

WP2 also sets a common terminology and understanding among the partners of the T-TRANS consortium, which come from seven different European countries, have complementary expertise and knowledge, and are an expression of heterogeneous professional backgrounds such as industry, academia, and consulting.

The objectives of WP2 are, as specified in DoW: to provide a clear snapshot of the current situation of European transport research; to develop a clear and unambiguous understanding of the current state of the art with regards to any existing initiative regarding the Intelligent Transport Systems domain. Those two specific objectives are achieved by means of two main Tasks: Task 2.1 “Overview of transport and key research policy in the EU” and Task 2.2 “Analysis of national and regional initiatives towards fostering Intelligent Transport Systems”. The results of all the activities carried out in WP 2 are presented in Deliverable D2.1 “T-TRANS Integrated Report on Intelligent Transport Systems Policy Support” which on the one hand, assesses and summarises innovation support mechanisms in transport sector and the conditions for transport innovation related research at EU level; and on the other hand, describes the initiatives for transport research and innovation of the countries involved in the T-TRANS consortium (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, The Netherlands, Spain) plus Czech Republic, with specific attention on ITS.

The work undertaken within Task 2.1 can be summarized as follows:

i) Overview of key transport research policy in the EU

ii) Review of the legislative measures put forward from the EU to support an ITS research agenda in:

- road transport

- rail transport

- waterborne transport

- air transport

iii) Summary of international cooperation in the transport sector as a key element of Common Transport Policy

iv) Analysis of the state of the art of the development of a competitive internal market for transport, to support an enhanced market deployment of ITS products and services in:

- road transport

- rail transport

- waterborne transport

- air transport

v) Insight to EU infrastructure policy, with particular emphasis on:

- facilitation of investment in prioritised transport infrastructure

- Infrastructure pricing and taxation reform

To further strengthen the state-of-the-art analysis for the benefit of the other T-TRANS Work Packages, within Task 2.1 special attention was paid on two domains established by key strategic directives such as: e-mobility and the customs policy with respect to innovative solutions. In particular: description of the major initiatives and drivers brought forward at the European level to increase coordination and standardization for electric vehicles (or e-mobility) to support T-TRANS Case Study 1 “Smart Grid: connection, charging, and storage of energy”; description of the main advances envisaged at the European level to harmonise, modernise and make customs procedures more efficient to support T-TRANS Case Study 3 “Revolution in International Transport Units (ITUs): Intelligent inter-modality”.

In Task 2.2, an internal deliverable was produced for each country (8 in total). Each internal deliverable addresses for the country under investigation the following relevant issues:

a) Innovation Policy Trends and Budget, i.e.,

• Trends and key challenges for innovation policy

• Innovation governance

• Recent changes in the innovation policy mix

• Internationalisation of innovation policies

• Evidence on effectiveness of innovation policy

• Trends in funding of innovation measures

• Departmental and implementing agency budgets for innovation policies

• Future challenges for funding of innovation policy at national-regional level)

b) ITS innovation policies, i.e.,

• Support infrastructure for ITS innovation

• Current frameworks for funding ITS innovation.

The outcome of WP2 has supported a more accurate definition and development of the Case Studies (WP3, WP4), to be used as reference for defining future recommendations focused on ITS deployment (WP5), and to exploit the potential of the G-local Communities of Interest on ITS (G-Local CIMs) to be addressed in WP6.

RESULTS:

The first part of WP2 is devoted to the analysis of the current status of the transport and innovation research policy in the EU, with special emphasis on the ITS domain. The analysis shows that a significant number of legislatives actions (Directives, Regulations and Communications) have been taken by the European Parliament and Council (EPC) and by the European Commission (EC) in the last decades to support, fund, ameliorate and strengthen the introduction, deployment and utilization of ITS in all the main modes of transport (road, rail, waterborne and air). Some clear patterns appear by the comparison of the deployment of ITS in the various transport modes:

✓ First, the primary concern for the introduction of ITS is safety, either for vehicles (automobiles, trucks, rail wagons and coaches, vessels, aircraft), drivers, passengers and pedestrians. There is evidence that ITS systems have increased safety and hence further research actions are expected to be promoted and coordinated by the European Union in the next future.

✓ A second major area where ITS have proven to provide evident benefits is the traffic management. In fact, the exploitation of some ITS technologies and applications, such as the use of position sensors, the sharing of information, the enhanced capabilities to compute large amount of data, allow to better manage the transport network by reducing congestion and maximizing the capacity of the existing infrastructure. Hence the use of ITS makes any transport system more sustainable both in environmental and economic terms.

✓ However, interoperability has been identified as a major barrier for a steady advance of ITS in the European market. Notable examples are the highway toll collection systems, the railways signalling and management systems, and the systems for providing air navigation services that are severely fragmented among the different European countries. To mitigate this interoperability hurdle, a significant amount of legislative and research initiatives have been carried out to promote coordination and standardisation.

In what regards to the analysis of the state-of-progress of the European legislation to set-up a competitive internal market for transport, it has been stated that diverse levels of competition exist among the various modes of transport, also in the use of the infrastructure. . For instance, the use of the capacity at airports is fully liberalised, even though tightly regulated, through the so-called airport slots. Instead, the liberalisation process has just started for the railways infrastructure and for the Air Traffic Management system and is expected to continue in the next future (e.g., through the Fourth Railways Package for railways).

The role of infrastructures has been addressed in more detail, with special focus on the economic aspects. The review identifies first the sources of investments for the European prioritised infrastructure highlighting that role of Cohesion and Structural funds for co-financing the 30 Priority Projects which are included in the guidelines for the development of the Trans-European Transport Network. In a second level, it is also described the current vision to reform the infrastructure pricing and taxation. The approach devised by the European Union is to fully and mandatorily internalise external costs (including noise, local pollution and congestion) for all transport modes through charging the use of the infrastructure. Market-based mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are also envisaged, even though the Emission Trading Schemes introduced in aviation was stopped as of November 2012.

Moving from the European to the national level, the analysis of the initiatives to promote ITS in the eight countries and their innovation policy and support systems draw the following results:

✓ The disparities amongst the analyzed countries have grown since the 2008 crisis. Despite the harmonization efforts deployed by EC, the level of fragmentation of the Innovation Policies in the EU27 has increased, together with the disparity on the resource and fund allocation.

✓ Strongly related to the first conclusion, the innovation support funding and instruments differ greatly both in nature and in intensity. The instruments put in place at each country depend not only on the key issues addressed at national level, but also on the macroeconomic situation of each country and the possibility it has to dedicate a higher or lower amount of own funds to the identified issues.

✓ The systematic use of evaluation findings has grown in importance. In fact, the development and implementation of assessment tools can be pointed out as a first needed step towards the establishment of consolidated rating system in terms of policy and funding instrument efficiency, opening new possibilities for those countries/regions interested in streamlining their policies and obtaining the biggest effect possible from the invested budget.

✓ There are no innovation policy instruments specifically geared towards the ITS in any of the analyzed countries. Even those countries that are leading ITS inclusion and development, such as Germany, The Netherlands and France, do not have a specific ITS innovation support policy. This is mostly explained due to the fact that ITS are in essence a horizontal area, enveloping a wide and growing variety of transport and ICT programs/services/initiatives. In consequence, funding instruments for ITS are found scattered within different transport and ICT innovation support transversal programs, with diverse funding intensities directed to both research and implementation stage projects.

3.3. WP3 Technology Mapping

In parallel to WP2, WP3 was launched in the first month of project implementation (September 2012). The main objective of this Work Package was to build an exhaustive but synthetic map of the technological context taking into account the EC main strategic lines and T-TRANS case studies. Another objective of WP3 was to elaborate a Technology Roadmap for the case studies.

The results of all the activities carried out in WP3 are presented in Deliverables D3.1 “ITS State of the art assessment” and D3.2 “T-TRANS Roadmap report”, both available on the project website. The objectives of WP3 are achieved by means of implementing two main tasks: Task 3.1 “T-TRANS technology Map” and Task 3.2 “Technology Roadmap for the case studies”.

The work undertaken in Task 3.1 has been focused in defining the technology scope and boundaries of the technology map for the identified “product” focus of the roadmap: the 4 case studies selected, as a representative sample of the ITS domain. Therefore, a common ITS technological context has been defined, followed by an ITS applications description, key technologies definition and classification, and ITS mapping adapted for T-TRANS Case Studies.

RESULTS:

The results of this exercise have tried to overcome the difficulties related to the establishment of a commonly validated approach for defining ITS but also of: collecting the relevant information, identifying the technologies in ITS field, identifying the main areas, technologies and applications on ITS, validating any classification and finally, deploying an added value technology mapping.

The key result of this task was the T-TRANS proposed ITS ontology, a vital part of the technology map since it provided a way of how to organize the different technological concepts, properties and characteristics.

A technology map requires the definition of the technological scope and boundaries where the analysis will focus. Since it is out of scope and probably useless to deal with a complete technology map at a deep level of all the technologies that has been used in ITS, in T-TRANS it has been proposed an intensive analysis of the five identified areas, paying special attention to some sub-areas with a bounded amount of relevant applications for the purpose of understanding a larger class of ITS applications:

▪ Area 1: Information Services:

Case Study 1: Smart grid: connection, charging and storage of energy.

▪ Area 2: Security, Safety and Control:

Case Study 1: Smart grid: connection, charging and storage of energy.

Case Study 4: Rail network technological system wide approach.

▪ Area 3: Freight and Logistics

Case Study 2: Revenue management technologies for freight transport.

Case Study 3: Revolution in intermodal transport units. Intelligent intermodality.

▪ Area 4: Booking, Payment and Pricing

Case Study 1: Smart grid: connection, charging and storage of energy.

Case Study 2: Revenue management technologies for freight transport.

▪ Area 5: Traffic Management

Case Study 4: Rail network technological system wide approach.

The applications have been gathered and matched to the different functions of technologies they make use of. Special attention is paid to the individual use of some general technologies: all technologies have been clustered by functions and explained in a more general way. An assessment of the technology readiness has been carried out, and the individual technological maturity analyzed and mapped according different levels of technology readiness. The boundaries of each case study have also been described in order to limit the scope.

All 60 identified ITS technologies that are used by the T-TRANS case studies have been assessed regarding their technology maturity. For each Technology four possibly answers regarding the technology readiness where up for discussion. None of them has been chosen to be an emerging technology because all of them are already applied on any market. A number of 6 have been considered to be adolescent technologies and 24 belong to the group of early adopted ones. However the majority of 30 are assessed to be mainstream technologies.

The outcome of Task 3.1 supported Task 3.2 by developing a roadmap for the case studies. This roadmap shows the way to go to reach the specific case study vision that will be described there.

In the subsequent work package 4 the list of technology is taken also as input. As a first step in task 4.1, Analysis of transport innovations in the past, the historical background of each technology is examined with consideration of different kinds of funding to identify generic drivers for success / failures. In order to compare different drivers not only the identified technologies of this report are taken into account, but also similar technologies. This list also served as input for task 4.2, Identification of innovation chains based on case studies, which is one of the most important tasks of the T-TRANS project.

Task 3.2 intends to create a technology roadmap report by identifying and describing each technology area, critical factors, unaddressed areas and resume the technological context being sensitive to international trends and key elements interacting in the ITS global market. Task 3.2 builds up onto the “Strategic planning” methodological approach, focusing on the development of a vision of the future business in terms of markets, business, products, technologies, skills for the case studies.

The roadmap construction has been based on several stages: State of the art, technology trends, market vision, critical variables and technological alternatives, gap analysis and roadmap.

RESULTS:

The main S&T result from this task has been the definition of the technology roadmap for each of the case studies. This result has been achieved by a cumulative exercise which outcomes have been resulted in the roadmap representation (as shown in figure 6).

At an early stage, an analysis of the concrete situation about the advances and the current situation of each case study has been implemented, identifying at top level current technologies (as identified in D3.1) services, products and functionalities available in the case study environment. The main output is to facilitate a vision about the current situation in the sector. This initial action has been followed by the identification of technology trends, including the current technology used to provide services and functionality in the case studies, newer technology incorporated to the Case study environment and the next year’s technology in preparation. The key output of this process has been to identify clearly the current and short term (1-2 years) technological solutions. A third stage has been the definition of market needs for the next 5 to 10 years (market vision) in order to clearly identify market needs in the next years and forecast market evolution in the near future while identifying potential services, functionalities, needs and opportunities. This process has helped T-TRANS consortium to gather high level information on market trends and it has been opened for revision and validation to a number of external stakeholders (mostly included in T-TRANS Stakeholders Advisory Board).

On a later phase, T-TRANS partners have carried out an identification of critical variables and technological alternatives, in order to concretely identify critical variables and describe future technologies. Furthermore, a Gap analysis has been implemented so to summarize the relation between technologies and market needs, providing a clear relation linking technology and needs identifying the Priorities and Effort and setting the base for the roadmap construction.

T3.2 was aligned with WP4 expectations as the results obtained in D3.2 are a direct input for WP4, like the technology availability dates for the coming years. The technologies were considered until year 2020, not beyond.

3.4. WP4 Market roadmap

WP4 aims at understanding the market drivers for transport innovation in order to accelerate the diffusion of innovations related to Intelligent Transport Systems. The results have been assessed against several test cases and will be generalized as far as possible into universal recommendations for all transport innovations.

Work Package 4 is the central Work Package in T-TRANS project, and the interactions between its tasks, outcomes and results have been strongly related and have strongly conditioned the rest of T-TRANS project activity.

The objectives of WP4 are achieved by means of implementing five main tasks: Task 4.1 “Analysis of transport innovation in the past”; Task 4.2 “Identification of Innovation chains based on case studies”; Task 4.3 “Comparison of ITS innovation diffusion processes in EU and the US”; Task 4.4 “Market analysis on the ITS case studies”; and Task 4.5 “Innovation governance and macroeconomic impact analysis of ITS”.

Task 4.1 had the main objective of examining the history of past selected innovations in Intelligent Transport Systems to determine the factors of success and failure, the economic impact of public funding and the lag between scientific excellence and technology diffusion.

In order to better understand feasible ways to transfer future ITS innovations to the market, this task has analysed 20 relevant past innovations between 1960s to nowadays. As ITS is a rather new concept no direct past innovations are assessed, but similar conditions can be found in the transport and ICT sectors. Therefore, deliverable D4.1 takes a close look to certain drivers that foster the success of an innovation or those that increase the probability of failure of the innovation in both sectors.

RESULTS:

After an analysis of the T-TRANS Case Studies, innovation cases and in-depth literature research, fourteen factors were kept to compare their influence in each past innovation. The final output has been the identification of cross-cutting generic drivers of success and failure for ITS technologies in the past.

For Task 4.2, the objective was to identify the innovation chains transferring technology to the market for the different Intelligent Transport System case studies.

Since the case study level was agreed to be a too wide level of analysis, T-TRANS consortium re-scheduled the analysis to one application per case study, taking into account key criteria such as level of maturity, proximity or presence to market, significance for the case study and information available:

• CS1 (Smart Grid: connection, charging and storage of energy), application: Availability Check & EV booking

• CS2 (Revenue Management technologies for freight transport), application: Revenue Management for freight transport

• CS3 (Revolution in Intermodal Transport Units: Intelligent inter-modality), application: Freight tracking

• CS4 (Rail Networks: a technological system-wide approach), application: Computer Aided Dispatch

In order to allow the fulfilment of identifying Innovation chains for the case studies/applications, the consortium adopted the Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) approach, which is focused in explaining the nature and rate of technological change and assesses the development of a particular technological field in terms of the structures and processes that support it or hamper it. this approach offered the most accurate and suitable approach in order to identify, and moreover, assess innovation chains, and to do so in an acceptable level of study such as the applications selected: on the one hand, by approaching the innovation system, TIS focuses in stressing out the interaction between actors who are needed in order to turn an idea into a successful process, product or service into the marketplace. On the other hand, TIS methodology, set around the assessment of “functions of innovation systems” brings out quantitative indicators, being much more evaluative in character.

RESULTS:

Following TIS methodology, T-TRANS carried out a common analysis reported in Deliverable 4.2 and that was based on six stages, bringing diverse results:

✓ Definition of the TIS for the application. This process involved the definition of the applications based on previous T-TRANS deliverables as well as explaining the application/s selection rationale; the definition of the application level of maturity in terms of market diffusion; and the assessment of the level of analysis.

✓ Exhaustive identification of the structural components of the TIS following Jacobsson and Bergek (2004) definition of the three main elements of technological innovation systems: actors, networks and institutions.

✓ Mapping the functional pattern of the TIS based on the assessment of 7 functions in order to measure innovation systems’ performance. This step follows Hekkert et al. (2007) and establishes 7 functions of innovation systems. Moreover, a battery of quantitative indicators is suggested to allow function assessment. All functions are individually addressed and scored on a six-tier scale (inexistent, very weak, weak, medium, strong, and very strong).

✓ Identification of inducement and blocking mechanisms. After it is established at what state of development a technological innovation system is, we can analyze the system problems that block the well-functioning of the innovation system.

✓ Assessment of the main reasons of weakness in accordance to structural components (actors, networks, institutions-context).

✓ Innovation chain design and conclusions for the relevant application-s selected from each case study. Based on all information provided by TIS analysis, Innovation Chains for the case studies are built up and positive and negative aspects are presented, together with a risk and opportunities analysis for the next stages of the innovation chain.

Deliverable 4.2 therefore resulted in a quite complex assessment which supported the design of the innovation chains of the applications selected as more relevant for each case study, plus the draft of relevant conclusions on the innovation systems on those.

In Task 4.3 the objective was to identify the market drivers for transport innovation in order to reduce the barriers affecting the diffusion of innovations in ITS. With this objective in mind, the research carried out in this task has established a comparison of the innovation diffusion process of ITS in the European Union and in the United States.

The methodology approach chosen to deploy this task and leading to the report in Deliverable 4.3 “Comparison of ITS innovation processes in EU and US” has been to have a clearly defined picture of the current US ITS framework first, to have enough information to compare the innovation adoption of four technology ITS systems in the EU and US.

This task analysed the innovation diffusion of four Intelligent Transport Systems with the S-curves theory developed by Rogers (1962) in both regions. The four ITS key systems selected for the analysis were:

▪ Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) for road

▪ Communication Based Train Control (CBTC)

▪ Internet Booking Engine (IBE)

▪ Electronic Toll Collection (ETC)

RESULTS:

The comparison of both innovation processes allowed a better understanding of the differences between both actors regarding technical, sociological and geographic factors.

The main results attached to this task have been the definition of innovation processes in US, assessment of the evolution of different ITS systems in EU and US, assessment of similarities and differences in innovation diffusion between the US and EU while comparing the penetration rate of the different technologies; and finally, the definition of major actors and prospect strategies for EU ITS developers to enter US markets.

In what regards to the results validity and main drivers for innovation, first it has been verified the validity of the Bass model approach for the selected key systems.

When comparing the penetration rate of the different technologies, results shown that the penetration rate is higher in the US than in the EU for three systems.

Another result has been to determine the role of the diverse factors affecting technology diffusion (five factors: technological factors, organisational factors, policy and normative factors, business factors, social factors).

In what regards to the proposition of adapted strategies for diffusion of EU innovations in the United States, those have been drafted once the US framework has been analysed and technology diffusion patterns have been assessed. A summary of the main results:

✓ Have a direct contact with one or several EU coordination networks will reduce the price of obtaining information and will put your organisation in contact with relevant stakeholders in the sector that might have similar objectives.

✓ A deep understanding of the Intellectual Property Rights and patents in US is essential.

✓ Awareness of current standards in US is also important.

✓ Determine an adapted product for US transport needs. It is important to acknowledge the different geography and patterns of transport in the US.

✓ Potential horizontal integration of a US ITS developer or a start-up in the sector might be helpful to reduce the time to know the market, as US market is commercialised differently. Habits, traditions and common practices are important to become a trustable entity in the US.

✓ Depending on the sector, the communication strategy might be a key point, due to the importance of marketing strategies in the US market

✓ To seek cooperation networks could be a good initiative by integrating one of the US business clusters, associations or think tanks of the related sector, to have direct contact with transport operators, standardisation organisms, potential distributors or suppliers

✓ Ensure the technology readiness of the innovation might be a critical point, not only from the point of view of the own technology, but also to verify the integration with the infrastructure that will support the product

✓ The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Buy American provision might change the supply chain of the innovation. To access to projects financed by ARRA, the Act states that all manufacture goods must be produced in the US. Some projects might be still on-going

✓ Try to answer one of the priority needs of the US ITS Strategic Plan, as they are the identified needs by the government and support can be found easily

The proposed expansion strategies towards the US market have been validated by selecting two innovations with a widespread adoption in the EU but not so deployed in the US market (eCall and pick-up delivery point), showing the relevance of the proposed points.

The main objective of Task 4.4 was to have a clear understanding of the market and the needs and views of the main stakeholders involved.

The project identified four case studies to focus in four main global areas of interest for the ITS deployment: electric vehicle in smart grids, revenue management in air cargo, intelligent intermodal transport units (ITUs) and signalisation in rail networks.

RESULTS:

T-TRANS consortium achieved the following results, detailed in Deliverable 4.4 “Market study on ITS case studies”:

▪ European market of each case study was analysed combining a general market survey with a focus on the key stakeholders involved in the value chain.

▪ Their cost structures, revenue streams and value proposition were identified, as the main parts of their business models, to better define their position in the market and their market expectations.

Conclusions of the study can be resumed in:

✓ For the first case study (integration of electric vehicle in smart grid) results show that the market seems promising and ICT will play a key role and are a necessary element to integrate in the value chain. Most of the market development technical barriers have already been overcome and the different actors seem to be determined to build the technological and organizational environment.

✓ For case study 2 (application of Revenue Management in Air Cargo) results show that the market is in an early stage of development. The most important barriers for market development have a technical and organizational origin (information transparency). Nevertheless, the market seems promising and new opportunities could appear with the integration of IT in this sector.

✓ For case study 3 (intelligent transport unit) results show a high market potential. Demand is pulling the integration of ICT in ITUs, especially for the intermodal container market. Some barriers concerning information transparency have to be overcame in order to ensure the profitability of new ITS.

✓ For case study 4 (integration of ICT in signaling and control for rail transport), even though the market potential is very high (due to kilometers of railway network to be upgraded), barriers are very important and difficult to overcome as they are highly dependent on local policy makers and local government investments.

Finally, Task 4.5 aimed at analysing how the innovation governance is organised in the ITS sector and proposing a set of robust guidelines on ITS to European decision-makers.

Task 4.5 activity has been summarized in Deliverable 4.5 ITS Market roadmap report. The structure of this report being based on the following key elements:

▪ Definition of four sub-sectors of ITS, inspired in the T-TRANS case studies: electro-mobility sector, air cargo sector, Intermodal freight transport sector, railway transport sector.

▪ For each of these sectors, the role of the main stakeholders in the innovation process is presented, based on the stakeholders identified in the task T4.4 of the T-TRANS project.

▪ Quantitative and qualitative analysis is performed. The quantitative approach consists in proposing innovation indicators. These indicators aim at measuring innovation in each sector: R&D budget in the sector; Number of patents in the sector; Number of scientific publications in the sector; Ratio between the number of patents and number of publications in the sector. The qualitative analysis is performed at a country level, presenting the strengths and weaknesses of each NIS.

▪ Guidelines for ameliorated innovation governance for ITS at European and Member State levels are consequently proposed.

▪ Finally, the impact of an accelerated introduction of ITS in the 4 sectors is evaluated. This valuation is based on existing roadmaps, where four main elements are identified: Objectives for 2020 and beyond; Concrete actions to be undertaken; Scenarios considered; Expected impacts.

RESULTS:

This task aimed at delivering a robust set of guidelines on ITS to European decision-makers, based on work performed in other tasks of the T-TRANS project.

As a conclusion, the creation of multidisciplinary national business clusters, unified long-term innovation development programs, public entities that centralise the innovation policy creation and application and measures to incentive the performance of innovation (i.e. rising patent applications) could be some interesting guidelines to take into account by countries with a weak innovation proficiency. At EU level, the results obtained from the analysis of the different innovation systems and through the whole T-TRANS project, lead to the following set of guidelines and recommendations for an improved European innovation system:

✓ A global rethink of how innovation is measured at EU and Member State levels: The definition of standard and homogenous indicators for the different sectors in every Member State and at EU level would allow to measure the innovation, its impacts and to identify critical factors affecting it. Being able to compare the results between different countries is necessary to identify weaknesses and to propose adapted solutions of improvement

✓ To build a data strategy for EU Member States concerning innovation indicators: To standardise and improve data acquisition, taking into consideration big data and open data strategies, would allow to ameliorate comparability, transparency and information exchange between the different countries and sectors, having a positive impact in the innovation process.

✓ A European coordination strategy for ITS associations, projects and other activities: The avoidance of duplication of activities and roles at European level is needed in some activity sectors, including ITS. As ITS is a multidisciplinary field, it requires the participation of energy, mobility and ICT stakeholders and the current NIS structure differs from one country to another. Thus, an adapted strategy is necessary to improve the coordination at EU level of national business clusters for different sectors.

✓ A EU complementation strategy, considering strengths of national/regional NIS for specific sector: The identification of the strengths (technical, business, commercialisation or financial) of each EU region or country would allow to complement the added value of each EU member, by joining forces and maintaining a European global competitiveness. To define intra EU innovation programmes based on complementary strengths at research and market levels could be a potential strategy to foster this complementarity.

✓ Inclusion of the ITS end user in the innovation governance process: To include the end user of the different ITS in the policy creation and implementation process, R&D activities and networks would foster innovation. A quadruple helix approach or open innovation governance could be the basis for such user inclusion.

✓ To better address the market conditions of the different transport modes and sectors: The actual raising of the market contestability for some transport sector (e.g. rail transport) would foster the innovation process. The specificities of each transport mode and sector, including the interaction with other sectors (i.e. energy and ICT sectors) should be taken into account for reducing market entry barriers.

3.5. WP5 Guidelines for market optimization

The main objective of this work package is to provide a series of recommendations and guidelines for best practice in the form of guides and to raise awareness of Technology Commercialization mechanisms and channels, in order to be adopted by the ITS Innovation Network for its approach. The fifth work package plays a key role in the project emphasis to broaden ITS commercialization strategies. It has aimed to achieve a robust understanding of strategies, channels, approaches and methods for technology commercialization. Moreover, WP5 has actually conceptualized the proposed guidelines and strategy for technology commercialization for a number of applications derived from the 4 case studies of the project and based on all most relevant inputs from previous Work Packages (WP2, WP3 and WP4).

The objectives of WP5 are achieved by means of implementing two main tasks: Task 5.1 “Compilation of Technology commercialization strategies for the case studies” and Task 5.2 “Compilation and consolidation of best practices”. Those two tasks are devoted to two respective deliverables: Deliverable 5.1 “Organization of T-TRANS seminars for the discussion of technology commercialization strategies” and Deliverable 5.2 “Technology Commercialization for ITS applications Best practice report”.

The high complexity of the technology commercialization procedures has been captured through open discussions and seminars in which specific features of the technology commercialization process have been presented, with an ultimate focus on the applications under study. This open process intended to back up the elaboration of a report compiling technology commercialization strategies for the case studies/applications (D5.2).

The methodology followed can be summarized as follows: After selecting specific applications for each of the case studies, based on their technological maturity level and untapped commercialization potential, T-TRANS partners have been engaged in the discussion and validation of the most suited model for technology commercialization. The aim being to design and implement a technology commercialization modeling exercise for those applications, simulating their entry into market, so to better understand the steps required to avoid the particular bottlenecks in each case study’ sector to affect the deployment success.

This effort has been also supported by a parallel analysis of technology commercialization and R&D results valorization, so to be able to better understand strategies for technology commercialization.

RESULTS:

The main outcomes of this WP have been on the one hand, the outcomes from the modeling exercise on the technology commercialization process for selected applications of the case studies. Those brought out diverse possibilities, scenarios and estimations for the applications selected. It also have offered a deep understanding of the context, key stakeholders involved, barriers, market segmentation and venture possibilities.

On the other hand, key outcome of this WP has been the compilation of recommendations to diverse stakeholders for ITS innovation commercialization, in an effort to provide valid guidelines to support the development of a comprehensive strategy for ITS deployment in Europe, summarized in the following lines:

✓ Recommendations for EU institutions

Develop a regulatory environment conducive to ITS

• Increase standardization efforts for interoperability as key market enabler

• Support a solid understanding of ITS know-how by effectively engaging all relevant stakeholders and streamlining the wide area of application of ITS

Expand collaborative research and development partnerships in the Public and Private sector

• Develop and introduce ITS focused support program, encouraging public agencies to deploy ITS technologies, public and private research centers to conduct research on key issues and industries to bring products and services into the marketplace in a coherent approach.

• Simplify administrative procedures and reduce administrative costs of participation in relevant EU initiatives

• Develop an ITS Commercialization portal, creating a single website with information about market developments, patent applications, marketing summaries for ITS applications with market potential

Disseminate information on the potential of ITS

• Promote the recognition of ITS sector as a key investment sector in the EU market

• Include further modal specific and intermodal differentiation on potential of ITS

✓ Recommendations for governments

Develop an environment conducive to ITS

• Encourage ITS in a broader range of institutions and disciplines

• Rather than funding support, the government must provide other benefits in the incentive type, such as tax benefits for technology innovators

• Broaden technical assistance and programs for small businesses to help facilitate technology transfer, development of appropriate business models and provide with financial support to close the development of the applications into products (valley of death)

• Actively participate in the ITS marketplace as end users rather than only funding scheme

Recognize ITS as a tool for regional-local development

• Foster the relationship with the local community and the contribution of ITS to the regional economy

• Analyze the benefits of restructuring existing support infrastructures (Research parks, incubators) to further facilitate technology transfer and commercialization, with an ITS focus

• Support the creation of local communities of interest to market, gathering a number of stakeholders participating in the ITS value chain, in order to analyze barriers for particular key market niches and applications and assess potentialities in a collaborative manner

✓ Recommendations for R&D centers

Develop the strategic, structural and institutional capacity for technology commercialization

• Develop collaboration as a strategic institutional policy

• Involvement and inducement of proactive commercialization policies

• Recognition of a challenge mentality, through incorporation of the transfer aim concept geared to the changes in the external demand, and the setting of challenging research aims

• Encourage the participation of business representatives in public research programming, implementation and evaluation

Facilitate the understanding of ITS drivers

• Provide systematic research plans and project execution

• Encourage R&D consortiums

• Provide resources to examining intellectual property (IP) and understanding business opportunities from transportation research

• Provide more company placements and internships for students and encourage the ITS integration in curricula

• Increase the interconnection for a mutual understanding in between market trends and needs and know-how generation, properly validated through robust communication and participation structures and initiatives

• Further support required to effectively disseminating best practices

✓ Recommendations for businesses

Increase cooperation with Public R&D centers

• Increase the success rate of commercialization by locating near public research centers and hubs

• Utilize existing resource sources, such as incubators, to gather technology and management support in the development of new ventures

Understanding the technology commercialization process

• Time required for technology commercialization is long-term, and the process is highly iterative with numerous risk factors existing in each stage. Managing technology commercialization in stage processes would allow focusing on management the value creation

• Secure intellectual property to protect technological products, processes and know-how

• Need for a fast-cycle process with checkpoints and criteria in order to succeed in the creation of new value

Approaching the ITS area with guarantees

• The ITS sector presents a number of high potentialities, but it is also dominated by strong market entry barriers. Acknowledging this reality is crucial for any attempt to commercialize new technologies

• Push for the generation of updated and comprehensive indicators that provide with trustful and relevant data on technology transfer and commercialization results

• Supporting joint ventures with R&D research centers to validate and verify ITS applications at development stage

• Provide a baseline for allowing internationalization of successful technologies

3.6. WP6 Guidelines for market optimization

The main objective of this Work Package was to build-up and launch pilot localized initiatives in pre-selected EU regions in order to strengthen the innovation chain through the analysis both of the already operating innovation support networks (with special focus on transport and ITS domains) and the capabilities of end users to access the expected business opportunities of the case studies applications. Furthermore, these pilots will be the seed of an EU ITS Innovation Network aimed to globalize the value chain of transport innovations between the engaging partners at EU level, rather than focus on each internal national market of each network.

With the implementation of WP6 of the T-TRANS project, the consortium created and enhanced the operation of three glocal communities of interests (glocal CIM) in the Region of Central Macedonia (Kentriki Makedonia-Greece), Galicia (Spain) and Latvia. The proposed communities of interest interconnected existing synergies (from each country) between them and under the umbrella of T-TTRANS project to define strategies for optimising the acquisition and access of innovative, R&D results and technology ITS related solutions. The glocal communities of interest acted as initiators to the creation of the proposed ITS e-innovation Network.

The objectives of WP6 are achieved by means of implementing two main Tasks: Task 6.1 “Establishment and operation of G-local CIMs” and Task 6.2 “Structuring the T-TRANS network”

Task 6.1 proposed to establish a multi-stakeholder G-local community of interest (CIM) consisting of public authorities, universities, development centers, business support organizations, science parks, associations for entrepreneurs, SMEs and other relevant actors if needed.

RESULTS

Key outcomes achieved, connected with the objectives of the task can be summarized as follows:

▪ Mapping and understanding of the regional aspects of different ITS initiatives in three (3) European regions.

▪ Identification and description of fifteen (15) prominent initiatives that affected positively the regional ITS perspectives and entrepreneurial efforts. After the initial identification of the entities involved in the ITS sector and other information that has been included, a detailed examination of related products / services / applications and initiatives has been developed.

▪ Understanding of funding mechanisms of the initiatives in each region.

▪ Potential G-local Community of Interest to Market (CIM) members have been identified from the examined initiatives.

▪ Mapping of Intelligent Transport Initiatives in the three (3) regions.

Task 6.2 intends to stimulate the creation of interconnected G-local CIMs across participating countries through the T-TRANS node. The task has been achieved through the following key actions:

1. Launching G-local CIMs processes in the three pilot regions, involving the actors mapped in the previous task.

2. Drafting for the creation of a centralized commercialization processes for the T-TRANS network

RESULTS

The established regional glocal CIM motivated approximately more than fifty (50) entities including SMEs, public governing bodies and R&D institutions. The implementation of the two (2) planned workshops in each of the pilot regions can be considered (totalling 6 wokshops), according as well to the received feedback after each workshop, more than successful.

The core of the efforts of the creation of regional glocal CIM have been the two organised (2) workshops in each region. A number of issues have been identified that are considered as obstacles for the further development of ITS domain so that the SMEs can sell their innovative products and services to markets other than those that are established.

Some of the results and ideas that were proposed during the workshops include:

▪ T-TRANS platform can help introduce in a more simple and market focused way ITS products and services;

▪ there should not be technology push and the users should be able to identify the best value for money;

▪ the platform should be supporting strategic intelligence on ITS;

▪ one of the potential benefits of the network and the platform could be collective intelligence;

▪ T-TRANS platform can evolve to be an ITS toolkit for the municipalities;

▪ The proposed e-innovation network should be based upon the customer and supplier relationship while can act as a B2B market place as well.

▪ The tool has to be simple and interactive;

▪ information has to be categorized by areas of interest and regions; information has to be presented in a friendly manner;

▪ it should allow filtering the information: entity, keyword, region, etc;

▪ the network should be open to different entities, such as companies, public administration, research, consulting, etc;

▪ the services should be organised in different levels: generating ideas, developing collaborative projects and supply-demand technology, from basic ideas to final products;

▪ the network should build trust between the members of the network;

▪ the network should be managed by an agent that will maintain the network updated and who facilitates the participation of companies.

In what regards to T-TRANS Network development, the main outcomes and results are also summarized in Deliverable 6.3 “T-TRANS e-innovation network”.

The most relevant result was the configuration and update of the T-TRANS project website, which included a special operative section devoted to the network counting with a network directory (entities logo, profile-contact and paging function), a geographical presentation of members and clustering, and a member’s registration form.

Other relevant results are focused around the design process of the T-TRANS network, taking into consideration sustainability issues, latent potentialities and boundaries:

▪ A theoretical justification on the potential contribution of Communities of Interest (CoI) to the commercialisation of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) products and services was provided and included a book chapter about the future of ITS to be published by Edward Elgar Publishing in 2015.

▪ The established pilot glocal communities of interest to market in Galicia, Central Macedonia and Latvia have been put in action, attracting new members. The results of the pilot operation have been more than encouraging since more than sixty entities, representing the business section, the academia and the government, enrolled in the pilot operation of the T-TRANS e-innovation network and participated in all the activities of the three pilot glocal CIM.

▪ The results of the benchmark study have moreover helped in supporting the future strategy that should be developed to further concretize the seed of the network started by TTRANS into a purely effective platform operating under the parameters of open innovation. A number of key proposals and conclusions are proposed to be taken in consideration for the future implementation of the proposed T-TRANS e-innovation network:

i) The development of innovative solutions and services on the Intelligent Transport Systems is a strongly diversified domain.

ii) The attempt to integrate so many different technologies and thematic areas, such as described in the T-TRANS project, under a common umbrella is considered as an extremely complex task.

iii) The use of an online platform to aggregate different entities involved in the ITS domains might be required to be more focused (may be only serving one of the ITS domains)

iv) On-line open innovation collaborative platforms play an important role in the whole process of upbringing ITS solutions and services to the market.

v) The application of the glocal CIM has been successful since they had a clear scope and vision that attracted members to the network.

vi) Glocal communities of interest to the market (CIM) and the application of the triple or quadruple helix innovation models to develop new ITS products and services can be definitely supported by online platforms.

vii) Despite of the existence of different established networks, stakeholders are still interested to participate in a new network as it is described in the T-TRANS project

Potential Impact:

4.1 Potential Impact

T-TRANS project addressed the topic TPT Topic TPT.2012.3-2 “Bringing innovative products and services to the market: analysis of pathways and best conditions for innovation”. More specifically, T-TRANS consortium decided to focus all efforts on one of the bullet points described by the Transport 2012 Work Program, bullet point number 3: “A selected number of cases will be identified where the untapped potential of new solutions, new technologies and new combinations of technologies could be exploited to create new business opportunities. 'Innovation Networks' should be established gathering key actors of the innovation chain (e.g. universities, research centers, industry, specialists of IPR, regulation and standardization bodies, funding agencies) to create a streamlined, integrated and dynamic environment for entrepreneurship and innovation. The networks will involve preferentially regions of Europe where links between actors of the innovation chain are weak”

In order to achieve the general objectives of the topic, and the particular bullet point, T-TRANS project defined a number of key potential impacts at proposal stage, to be fulfilled with the actual implementation of the project. The assessment of those impacts is summarized as follows:

▪ T-TRANS identified 4 cases with clear untapped exploitation potential intending to cover though but not thoroughly the ITS span of applications. These different specific applications have been studied in order to determine the innovation chain for the transfer to market. In this sense all WP4 and specifically deliverables D4.2 Innovation chains of the 4 ITS applications and D4.4 Market study on the ITS case studies, are specifically directed, by also taking into account all previous activity of the project, to proceed to the analysis of the cases, understanding the market drivers for transport innovation in order to accelerate the diffusion of innovations related to ITS.

The results of the project activities in this direction have indeed gathered relevant information on innovation mechanisms, therefore supporting a further facilitation of the upbringing of innovative ITS products and services to the market. The target groups of these results are basically all stakeholders involved in the innovation chain for the case studies, from transport policy decision makers to the diversity of industry actors involved in transport system operation and in the design and development of new IT based solutions for transport.

▪ The establishment of innovation networks gathering key actors of the innovation chain has been also a key activity of the T-TRANS project. T-TRANS support action has effectively set-up innovation nodes, under the definition of G-Local Communities of Interest to Market (groups of stakeholders relevant in ITS), involving in particular regions of Europe where links between actors of the innovation are weak.

Work Package 6 has been devoted to this task. By actually achieving the setting of an effective experimental framework for defining diffusion strategies for the selected ITS case studies at national and regional levels, T-TRANS has actually accomplished a key impact: to pave the way to reinforce the process of innovation diffusion by enhancing the knowledge flux, raising awareness of the enablers and barriers for ITS innovation deployment at local-regional levels and moreover, getting diverse ITS stakeholders together so to formalize a shared vision of the market and knowledge area in which they interact. T-TRANS put strong emphasis in reaching and gathering representatives (target groups) from all the innovation chain or triple helix at the local level in which the 3 G-local CIMs have been defined, set and implemented. Nevertheless, there was special interest in involving SMEs active in the field of ITS. The reason to concentrate efforts on this target group was motivated from the proposal inception stage since it was considered the target group with higher risk to be excluded from the existing Innovation support mechanisms and networks at both local and EU aggregated levels, and at the same time, the group with higher potentialities to match the complex cross-cutting approach (ICT and Transport) underlying under the ITS area.

As a short term impact, T-TRANS managed therefore to formalize the interaction between the triple helix actors in the 3 G-local CIMs, while achieving raised mutual awareness of the diverse stakeholders involved in ITS at local levels and a sound acknowledgement of their needs.

Their active participation in the round of workshops programmed during WP6 and the feedback collected from them became relevant to assess the whole project scope.

The potential envisaged impact in the long run is linked to the establishment of a structured platform that facilitates the cooperation amongst actors involved in the ITS domain at EU level. The success of the pilot operation of the T-TRANS network can be measured by the interest that it has awakened, especially among its more critical target group: SMEs. In this sense, it is expected that the legacy of the project would stay in the long term and serve as base for a near future platform-network, fully operative under an open innovation approach which is currently under discussion by some of the members of this consortium.

▪ T-TRANS proposal identified also a key impact to be reached with the implementation of the project: the support to good governance in ITS. In order to successfully increase the deployment of ITS in Europe new transport strategies should be considered, to maximize the use and efficiency of existing infrastructure and meet future mobility needs more responsibly. A plan to guide the deployment of ITS applications is therefore needed in order that products and services could be seamlessly integrated. One of T-TRANS project main impacts is to support the European R&D ITS industry to catch the business opportunity of this area in the very near future, by contributing to assess the research and innovation framework necessary to support the successful implementation of innovative technology in ITS domain.

The conclusions of T-TRANS are not only a set of support documents based on the state of the art of Innovation support schemes in transport (ITS in particular), and the application of models in order to reinforce the commercialization of technologies or set up the grounds of an Innovation Network on ITS, but a re-thinking of these models for the specific features of ITS. Hence, an innovation framework that aims at Europe R&D to transform its excellent and intense know-how on ITS into valuable applications in good strategy.

This impact is mainly targeted to the wide and strongly diversified stakeholders involved in their own work domain in the planning, assessment, evaluation and execution of innovation support for ITS, ICT and Transport domains. Though T-TRANS intends to reach all actors of the triple helix, including industry and research representatives, the main target group is the policy decision making, most importantly at EU and national governments levels, but also regional and local authorities.

These conclusions have been translated into deliverables D2.1 “T-TRANS integrated report on ITS policy support”,D4.5 “Innovation governance for an accelerated introduction of ITS”, D4.2 “Innovation chains of 4 ITS case studies”, D5.3 “Technology Commercialization for ITS applications” and D6.3 “Report on structuring the proposed T-TRANS Innovation Network”.

▪ T-TRANS has supported the transfer of knowledge from R&D activities to the market. The dissemination of results among the ITS and Transport related Industry in general is, as well as the key stakeholders in the innovation chain and, to a lesser extent, the European Research projects, another target of the T-TRANS project. Hence, the different events of T-TRANS: seminars, workshops and the dissemination event (final), have served as a platform to put Industry, R&D performers and Innovation support chain actors together to discuss how to transfer knowledge into the market and the strategies to follow.

The decision making process of innovation chain is not straightforward. As there is not one optimal strategy for technology commercialization for a specific application, an optimal strategy depends on many factors such as risks of the technology development, market uncertainty, innovation support schemes affecting the process, etc...

T-TRANS has captured this complexity through open discussions of the strategies, where partners with different profiles and expertise have discussed over the models. Strategies have been hence validated by a “panel of experts” sessions. As the consortium of T-TRANS could not capture all the required knowledge and expertise for the different scenarios that this project wanted to address, the project has succeeded to involve stakeholders from outside the consortium. Therefore, associating them in the elaboration process is the way by which T-TRANS has obtained robustness and hence credibility to our conclusions. Also this has permitted spreading the high quality work done the project and assuring the achievement of this impact.

Deliverables D2.1 “T-TRANS integrated report on ITS policy support”, D3.2 “T-TRANS Roadmap report”, D4.4 “Market study on ITS case studies”, D5.1 “Organization of Seminars for the discussion of technology commercialization strategies” and D5.2 “Technology Commercialization for ITS applications, best practice report”, amongst have served as reference guidelines to the industry and R&D support actors.

Looking at the results achieved in the project, T-TRANS will have impact on the further development of supporting tools for analysis of the ITS environment, and recommendations for stakeholders at regional, national and the EU levels. Moreover, the focus of the project in understanding the market conditioners, drivers and barriers for such a cross-cutting domain such is ITS, will impact the process of moving innovations from bench-level research into the marketplace.

The future of a knowledge-based European society depends to a great extent on the capacity of European countries and regions to create smart systems that will link and facilitate knowledge creation and innovative enterprises.

Is in this sense that T-TRANS project has a wider societal implication: by granting an structured access to the knowhow, reinforcing the process of innovation diffusion and setting an effective experimental framework for defining strategies for the selected ITS case studies, T-TRANS has aimed to support the capabilities of existing innovation support mechanisms and networks. It is expected that this effort will impact the wider society in the form of more structured ITS planning at EU level, which due to its envisaged role as competitiveness and innovation enabler, would benefit the society as a whole in the mid term.

4.2 Dissemination activities

During its lifetime T-TRANS project set out various dissemination activities aimed at promoting its achievements, increase the project visibility in the transport sector and reach the widest audience possible.

The project dissemination plan was actually elaborated during proposal negotiation stage and included all dissemination activity, defining the audience and instruments to carry it out:

1. Website

2. Logo and templates

3. Leaflet

4. Linked-in group

5. Posters

6. Newsletters

7. Journal publications

8. Press releases

9. Participation in national and international events

10. Partners´ dissemination media and communication tools

11. Other contributions

1. Website

The web site of the T-TRANS project was designed and implemented by INTELSPACE S.A. by the second month of project implementation (October 2012). By May 2013, a second version of the web was launched including a new design, more user friendly interface and a set of renovated functionalities. An entire section for the ITS Innovation Network was included in this new version, containing:

• information about the three nodes

• a directory of entities

• information display by entity and in cluster mode

• a members registration form

T-TRANS website has been kept continuously updated thanks to the user friendliness of Wordpress CMS features, which allow each partner to create new posts-articles on the web and to associate them with categories making use of a username and password. INTELSPACE distributed a user guide explaining the technicalities of the web engine.

The web included a number of sections devoted to provide information about the project, which were addressed to the general public. During the project, website visitors were informed about the project’s concepts, methodology, progress and results. All results (deliverables) accepted by the EC are available to download.

T-TRANS website gathered 6456 sessions, accounting 19.979 page views and 3613 users. The geomap of the visits was worldwide, with special emphasis on the EU27 but also significant traffic from the US, Russian Federation, Brazil, Australia and Japan amongst other countries.

2. Logo and templates

A logo was created to maintain the corporate identity of T-TRANS project. Templates for MS power point presentations, deliverables and revisions were designed to ensure a united presentation format to those external to the project.

3. Leaflet

SERNAUTO developed the project leaflet containing information about the project objectives, the case studies and the partners involved in it. The digital version is uploaded in T-TRANS website and project collaborative platform, and 1,000 copies were printed at the project start for distribution.

4. LinkedIn® group

As part of the multichannel dissemination strategy, T-TRANS project intended to have a visible presence in the social networks. Since the use of Facebook® was discarded by consensus of the Project Management Board members for diverse reasons, the focus was set in the Linked-in platform by considering it more appropriate. A Networking group was created in October 2013, administered by Intelspace and UAB. Activity accounted for a total of 66 sessions/discussions.

5. Posters

During Kick off Meeting, Project Coordinator designed and printed a first version of the project poster (only one copy was printed). By mid of first year, SERNAUTO improved the project posters design using the leaflet image. Two different versions: one general and the other containing more information about the project were designed. The digital format is uploaded in T-TRANS intranet and 8 copies (4 of each) were printed to be used by partners.

A second version of the project poster was updated by UAB and Sernauto in November 2014 following the invitation for T-TRANS project to participate and be present in the European Electric Vehicle Congress 2014 (http://www.eevc.eu/ ) and EU Project Day on December 2nd, 2014 in Brussels.

6. Newsletter

First T-TRANS Newsletter was finalized on July 31st and sent to all partners for its distribution. It provided basic information about the T-TRANS project (Kick off Meeting, consortium members, case studies, expected results, resume on Work Progress and internal meetings, main deliverables submitted, other related projects and upcoming activities)

The second T-TRANS newsletter was developed by SERNAUTO and sent to all partners for its distribution on January 2014.Contents:

- Project progress and intermediate results

- Report on the success or failure of past innovations

- Identification of innovation chains

- Comparison of ITS innovation processes in EU and US

- 1st Workshop for the G-local CIM in the ITS domain in Galicia— Vigo, September 24th

- 1st Workshop for the G-local CIM in the ITS domain in Latvia—Riga, October 16th

- Other activities: Win-Log 2013

- Upcoming events

The third T-TRANS newsletter was developed by SERNAUTO and sent to all partners for its distribution on July 2014. Contents:

- 2nd Workshops for the G-local CIMs

- 2nd Seminar of WP5

- TRA 2014

- New deliverables

- Upcoming events

7. Journal Publications

Several publications based on the outcomes of T-TRANS have been implemented, either in technical publications or in scientific conference procedures.

8. Press releases

SERNAUTO developed the first press release, to inform all the transport stakeholders at national and European level about the Project launching. It was reviewed by the rest of the partners. Two more press releases were produced and distributed via online procedures. All partners participated by distributing the information at national level and to their contacts.

9. External Conferences and events

T-TRANS partners have been participating in ITS related conferences and events. Promotion of the project and its results has been envisaged through multiple ways: from paper presentation to leaflet distribution. These events have been an opportunity to establish or reinforce links with other projects, to identify and use synergies between transport and ITS initiatives, and to figure out the requirements and relevant topics for future collaboration.

The main dissemination activities performed individually by the partners account for over 40 participations in workshops, conferences, seminars at international and national levels (full description of those can be found in Deliverable 7.2 “Dissemination Activities report”), including an invited session to present T-TRANS project in Paris during Transport Research Arena 2014.

10. Partners dissemination media

T-TRANS partners have performed communication on main or specific project outcomes through each partner’s dissemination media and communication tools. One communication yearly about the project activities and public deliverables has been published in partner’s own newsletters (i.e. SERNAUTO INFORMA corporate magazine) and brief project description, logo and link to T-TRANS website has been embedded in most of partners’ own websites (when possible, following corporate ruling).

11. Other contributions and dissemination activities

T-TRANS partners have disseminated the project in relevant networks (such as presenting project to industry associations, clusters and national-regional oriented bodies).

T-TRANS partners decided to create a video to support the dissemination activity. LGI was in charge of the production and UAB and SERNAUTO, of the validation. It was presented during the T-TRANS Invited Session of the TRA 2014 that took place in Paris the 16th of April. The video has been embedded in the front page of the project website and is available in Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jMF52AbIRk&list=PLvZvbwAr8eP8ZhH_K1l3

T-TRANS project participated in a special edition of the Projects Magazine, published in November 2014, in which there was a section focusing on leading research across Europe by involving a handful of the best examples in line with the start of Horizon 2020. The publication is distributed amongst a wide target audience including academic/research community, the public sector, Research EU policy makers and a commercially-minded audience responsible for the implementation of new applications.

This article summarized the key findings of T-TRANS project, highlighting the methodology designed and implemented, the results achieved by the project and the potential uses for those results.

4.3 Exploitation plans

T-TRANS project has brought relevant information about the technological, market and systemic drivers of ITS innovation and related technological products and services commercialization. In this sense, the project results can be considered exploitable in a wide sense by a variety of stakeholders: research centres, industry, national-regional and EU agencies involved in supporting S/T in Transport and ITS domains. For those actors involved in the support of S/T and Innovation, the conclusions and recommendations coming out from the T-TRANS implementation might be considered in order to shape their strategies and measures to exploit the ITS area.

T-TRANS partners will use the results gained by the work on the project for future research projects and the consulting of stakeholders dealing with ITS, intermodality and technology commercialization. The state-of-the-art analysis of the most relevant factors of ITS with references to the four case studies is an extremely valuable starting point for new research activities. Some partners of T-TRANS consortium have summarized the key findings of the project into parallel dissemination materials and incorporated them into their portfolios (LGI, KEMA). The knowledge about new trends and new technology helps to identify the relevant topics and has been used already for new research applications.

Moreover, UAB and other partners involved in T-TRANS project have shown strong interest in fostering the developing of the ITS network following an open innovation platform scheme, in which a number of entities could be involved in the development of new ITS applications, integrating engineers, designers, providers, manufacturers and if needed other collaborators such as universities.

Though a succeeding project to continue the team’s work has not yet been initiated, some consortium members are screening and discussing possible patterns for this cooperation, and also assessing it with external actors and peers. The idea being for the T-TRANS based platform to provide a useful vehicle to drive forward the next generation of ITS solutions.

List of Websites:

T-TRANS website can be found at the following link:

http://www.ttransnetwork.eu

Contact Details:

The project is co-ordinated by UAB

Coordinator:

Mr. Xavier Leal

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Telecommunications Department

Unit of Logistics and Aeronautics

C/ Emprius 2

08202 Sabadell

Spain

Tel: +34 93 7287758

Fax: +34 93 7287753

E-mail: Xavier.leal@uab.cat

LGI

Lagrange SARL

Eva Boo

ATOS

ATOS Spain S.A.

Alicia García

KEMA

KEMA Nederland BV

Teun Ploeg

SERNAUTO

Asociación Española de fabricantes de equipos y componentes para la Automoción

María Luisa Soria

Fraunhofer CML

Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Services

Susanne Kellberger

UNITS

Universita degli Studi di Trieste

Lorenzo Castelli

INTELSPACE

Intelspace Texnologies Kainotomias AE

Isidoros Passas

TTI

Transport and Telecommunication Institute

Irina Jackiva