Traffic- Health- Environment. Intelligent Solutions Sustaining Urban Economies (THE ISSUE)

Framework: FP7 — Capacities
Programme: Regions of Knowledge
Destination: Transnational cooperation between regional research-driven clusters
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: United Kingdom,United Kingdom,Poland,Italy,Italy,France,France
Call:  (FP7-REGIONS-2011-1, 2011)
Start date: 2011-12-01
End date: 2014-11-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3205802.4
EU funding (EUR): 2749981.0
Participants: 13
Project status: CLOSED

This proposal is presented by a consortium of regional research clusters whose core members are already pursuing research and technology development (RTD) in programmes that map on to their local or regional transport policy priorities. Common themes of expertise within the consortium apply to the fields of Traffic, Health and Environment (THE); the objective of the project is to apply this research base to achieve Intelligent Solutions for Sustaining Urban Economies. (ISSUE). This proposal truly addresses THE ISSUE. Several research areas are identified that deal directly with headline themes of this FP7 Call, namely: -transport impacts on urban mobility, -transport greening; -health, safety and security of citizens, -associated economic impacts. Diverse technologies and research applications will be brought to bear on the above issues, including: • Computer intelligence solutions and real-time satellite navigation data integrated into existing operational urban traffic management systems. • Space and in-situ measurements to help mitigate risk to citizens’ health from traffic-induced air pollution. • Technology demonstration and pre-operational real time trials of a hydrogen fuel cell powered car operating in a city environment (2012). THE ISSUE programme will create a vibrant partnership of regional research clusters to bring together and coordinate already-existing and projected RTD programmes relevant to Traffic, Health and Environment both within the clusters and more widely in the broader European research community. In parallel, consultations will be held with participating regional and local authorities to identify economic priorities of those regions, specific to the themes of Traffic, Health and Environment. Tensioning RTD actions against regional economic objectives will be the next step. This approach paves the way to shape the application of research outputs towards delivery of regional strategies by developing a framework for coordinating research actions and exploitation. The coordination process requires proactive knowledge exchange between core partners through a focussed dissemination programme and a structured approach for mentoring and knowledge transfer to regions with less well developed research structures. The core partners are East Midlands, UK, Mazovi Region, Poland, MOLISE REGION, Italy, Midi Pyrenees and Aquitaine regions, France. In each case we can identify active regional research clusters with programmes and expertise in relevant thematic areas. Each core partner can satisfy the “triple helix” requirement. A wider network of new regional clusters will also be built up. Their regional representatives and research teams will be encouraged to participate in THE ISSUE’s series of workshop and dissemination events and to become active partners in downstream RTD actions that THE ISSUE will be seeking to develop. Promotion of the new cluster programme will be facilitated, in part, through nationally-based knowledge transfer and innovation networks as well as the transnational NEREUS regional network. The expected outcome will be a Europe-wide research forward look and implementation plan for the exploitation and further development of relevant economy-driving, environmentally-sensitive traffic and transport initiatives for more sustainable transport economies in the cities, towns and regions of Europe.

Keywords: transport,health,environment,sustainable regional economies,regional clusters,green transport,mobility,innovation,research exploitation,intelligent transport systems,competitiveness