RRTC - Regional Railway Transport Tesearch and Training Centre Foundation
Overview
Background & policy context:
The Balkan peninsula is an important crossroad in Europe. The creation of a training and research centre in the field of railway transport as part of the European research and education area contributes to the development of modern, competitive, safe and comfortable railways in the Balkans.
Objectives:
The aim of the project was to found an international research and training centre in the field of railway transport in the Balkans.
Specific objectives and priorities are:
- to enable further collaboration in the field of research and transport staff training in the region;
- to provide experience exchange and dissemination of research results;
- to create information databases and make them available for the needs of cooperation in future projects;
- to facilitate the applicability of research for improving railway transport in the Balkan peninsula.
The centre will be based at the Higher School of Transport in Sofia and will be open for membership and joint activities to all research and educational institutions in the region and Europe.
The centre will work to achieve:
- coordination of the institutional activities in research and education;
- increasing the scientific potential in the Balkan countries;
- creating joint working and expert groups in the region;
- harmonisation of the railway system on the Balkans with the European one.
Methodology:
The main activities of the project are:
- carrying out surveys on the problems of railway transport in the Balkans in order to present them as priority topics for further research, training courses and mobility, and a survey on the current state of the surface transport in the Balkans in order to outline the most important and urgent problems that must be solved using scientific methods in compliance with ERRAC and EURNEX objectives;
- comparing the existing conditions of transport in the region to the EC requirements of sustainable transport development and the policy of Pan-European corridors in order to select topics for future research projects;
- organising workshops, courses and dissemination of theoretical and applied science results;
- providing support to regional scientific forums, publishing activities and other events, enhancing the institutional and personal collaboration in the region;
- summarising the objectives of the national transport policies in the Balkan countries to find out problems of common interest;
- encouraging the cooperation between the scientists from the Balkan countries, providing support to young researchers and PhD students and encouraging the development of joint projects with transport companies and industrial enterprises;
- collecting information about the possibilities of RRTC to support common activities of researchers and university teachers;
- providing support to publishing conference proceedings, books, lecture scripts, leaflets and other advertising materials.
The target groups and potential participants are:
- research and educational institutions;
- companies and enterprises connected with railway transport and industry;
- national and international professional organisations.
The participants in the project will elaborate its statute, structure, organisation and strategy oriented to enlarge the scope, of integrated research and training activities in the field of surface transport.
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