Overview
In the green paper "The European Research Area: New perspectives", the European Commission concluded that fragmentation of the ERA still exists and prevents Europe from fulfilling its research and innovation potential. In particular, effective knowledge sharing should be achieved at European level.
In the field of aeronautics and air transport there are many initiatives at European level undertaking the dissemination of scientific knowledge in the different relevant disciplines. Different associations are active with different formats of events such as, large conferences, moderate size thematic conferences, symposia, workshops, short courses, etc. In addition to presentations in events, the knowledge is further disseminated in the form of journal publications, proceedings, etc. More and more publications are now electronic which gives them a large potential for an easy dissemination and allows for the use of electronic search facilities.
For this reason, several organisations active in this field decided to unite forces in order to increase their effectiveness and better materialise their objectives and address the same purpose to the European Commission by jointly submitting the proposal for this project. An ambitious goal of holding a European aeronautic/aerospace conference at the end of the programme in 2011, was planned.
The aim of the E-CAERO project was to harmonise the dissemination between several European associations in the aeronautics/turbo machinery sector. The main objectives were:
- Identifying existing and new areas of interest and clarifying skills, experiences and capabilities of the partners in the relevant technological areas of multi-physics Aeronautics and Aero engines;
- Developing new concepts of collaborative scientific/technical organisation of European/international events in order to ensure the high quality of events;
- Merging existing and new logistic concepts and making the activities more efficient, cheaper and more attractive to the academic and industrial audience.
The specific activities focused on:
- The State-of-the-Art dissemination existing in the aeronautics/turbo machinery areas in the scope of each partner for single and multi-physics simulation, experimentation and design tools;
- The development of a common database IT tool incorporating the knowledge of the relevant scientific/technical/logistic organisation and dissemination of events including proceedings, journals and websites;
- The collaborative organisation and management of existing and new academy and industry oriented events;
- The evaluation of the impact of the dissemination of the project outputs amongst universities, research centres and industries in the aeronautic/turbo machinery sector.
The starting point was the existing network of each partner. The main outcomes of the project were:
- Identification and consolidation of technical areas for dissemination;
- Collection and storage of information in a European Database including written information;
- Set-up of new events requiring the sharing of knowledge in technical network expertise and logistics;
- Common management and technical activities;
- Identification and merging of joint skills, experiences and capabilities;
- Sharing of knowledge through collaborative single/multi-physics activities of each partner;
- paving the way to management efficiency.
Funding
Results
The six associations involved in the project looked for the most appropriate approach towards a common dissemination strategy, firmly based on the project tasks and following the main guidelines defined by the objectives of the project. The following fields were investigated:
- Conferences, seminars and workshops: the joint organisation of new or previously organised events was one of the main discussions within the E-CAERO consortium. Partners organised common activities, as well as invited other partners to collaborate on the organisation;
- Information technology (IT) tools: two main tools were discussed. The first was a common webpage. A webpage where anyone interested on research should be able to find the most relevant information regarding the topic. A common webpage would help synchronise and optimise organisational efforts in each organisation. The second was the conference manager tool. This would fully manage a conference from the creation and administration of the event, to the management of papers and registrations;
- Activity dissemination: a periodic newsletter was produced and the first issue was released, taking advantage of the AERODAYS 2011 conference in Madrid.
Policy implications
Special sessions within thematic conferences or the E-CAERO newsletter (as first released in March 2011) illustrated the specific results from the project activity. Several sessions were planned for the near future, targeting the joint organisation of conferences, while others had already taken place.
As part of the planned work, more common activities were planned and new activities were to be organised. Conferences were one of the most visible activities of this effort, as well as the newsletter, which is available for free on the webpage (www.e-caero.com). The main effort for the next period of the project would be devoted to the generation of the final release of the IT tools. This meant that special effort would be devoted to the upgrade of the visual image of the webpage. This easy-to-use webpage needed to be continuously maintained and fed with more and more information. Another important milestone was the final release of the conference manager tool, which was already published for the internal use of the consortium. The alpha release was intended to detect system bugs and issues that need to be improved or upgraded.
Other results
The project effort was devoted to creating a European organisational common effort to easily disseminate and spread the research knowledge from one source to another, taking research institutions into account, as well as industrial companies and policymakers.
Policy objectives
2. Innovating for the future: technology and behaviour:
2.2. Promoting more sustainable development.