The greener road ahead
To have an advanced, viable civilisation for us and our children, we need to look several decades into the future and plan ahead. The EU-funded project 'User driven stimulation of radical new technological steps in surface transport' (U-STIR) is examining the challenges in Europe's surface transport beyond 2050. It is outlining radical new technological concepts and proposing new mobility and transport solutions, while improving the quality of life and the environment as well. The project is involving Innovation Incubators, which will exploit different ideas to analyse the technological drivers for 2050 and beyond. Different tools and ideas from partners are spurring the creative process through workshops. U-STIR is also fostering an innovation-friendly climate, motivating researchers, industry and users to participate in the innovation process and giving stakeholders ideas to support this process of innovative excellence. The project began with an analysis of current and future gaps in innovation. It summarised the main issues and predicted environmental and socio-economic problems relating to transport, correlating them with the innovations in surface transport. U-STIR then gathered information on policy goals, gaps and innovation related to transport challenges in order to prepare a report on foresight activities. Existing innovation campaigns connected to the EU Year of Innovation were analysed and new ways to trigger innovation were investigated. The project partners also organised information-gathering workshops together with local stakeholders. The main findings obtained relate to the innovation climate in each country, and their results serve as an input for future workshops. An innovation portal, called Innovation Pump, became a part of the project website and is supporting other project tasks. It features two valuable mechanisms, the first being a creativity support tool and the other being a 'tools and materials' section that can help further the project's aims. To establish and encourage an innovation-friendly climate, the project is interacting with numerous research facilities, firms and scientific communities. Exchange of innovation practices is set to follow, and dissemination of the project results is planned. Once Europeans learn about the challenges facing surface transport over the next few decades and what can be done, a new consensus will start to take shape about a brighter, greener future.
