Final Report Summary - PROS (Priorities for Road Safety Research in Europe)
Executive Summary:
About 120 experts from more than 40 stakeholder organisations have contributed to the development of a comprehensive European road safety research roadmap within the two years of running time of the PROS support action. This roadmap is presented in this final report (cf. Fig. 6 and Fig. 7) together with the contents of the eleven prioritised research topics contained therein (cf. annex).
Moreover, this report gives an insight into the background of the project, its specific objectives, its structure and the basic principles followed: covering road safety as a whole, maximising involvement, focusing on priorities, creating transparency and basing important decisions on remote interaction between experts. Following these principles was facilitated by a clearly defined process for setting research priorities, which was developed by the project as a key deliverable and can be applied, with minor adaptations, to other fields of transport research, as well.
According to this process, a comprehensive information base for the development of road safety research priorities was put together by the PROS project, which contains information on relevant societal trends and scenarios, existing road safety research agendas and roadmaps as well as current research activities in this field. About 30 research agendas and roadmaps and more than 100 projects were analysed in the preparation of this information base, which can be made use of by future initiatives in road safety research programming, too. The process for the prioritisation of research topics in a multi-stakeholder group and the related information base are also described in this report.
From the road safety research roadmap developed by PROS, key recommendations for the upcoming Transport Work Programmes in Horizon 2020 can be derived:
For the Transport Work Programme 2016, PROS recommends to include the following topics as important elements of road safety, behavioural and infrastructure-related research:
• Behaviour in traffic – Making us safer road users
• Technological leadership in safe future vehicles – Improving protection in crashes
• Safe roads design – Making them self-explaining and forgiving to the benefit of all road users
For 2017, the following road safety and ITS-related topics are recommended:
• Improving protection in crashes – Counteracting our fragility
• Technological leadership in safe future vehicles – From assisted to automated driving
• Innovation in ITS infrastructure for road safety – Making use of the connected world
These recommendations are based on the assumption, that the main road safety research needs covered by the Transport Work Programme 2014 will finally be addressed by funded projects. Otherwise, the topic “Vehicle technology for two-wheeler safety” and research on “Traffic safety analysis & assessment” should be considered for inclusion in 2016/2017, too.
In order to disseminate the basic project concept, the recommendations above as well as further results, more than 20 presentations on the PROS project and its outcomes have been given at conferences and stakeholder meetings since the project start.
All in all, the PROS project has been the first initiative in which a process for the definition of research priorities with this degree of transparency has been established in a European multi-stakeholder network covering road safety research as a whole. Following the analysis of different options for continuation, PROS activities are now carried on under the umbrella of the ERTRAC Working Group Road Transport Safety & Security with the ambition of integrating the basic principles of PROS in the ERTRAC approach and building on the PROS results.
Project Context and Objectives:
Project Context
Europe has made great advances in road safety over the last decades, but with 28,126 fatalities in 2012 [1], the EU is still far away from the long-term objective of Vision Zero as adopted by the European Commission and by important European stakeholder organisations [2], [3], [4], [5]. In a global perspective, this vision of a road transport system in which nobody is killed or severely injured anymore is even more challenging, as worldwide road safety statistics are alarming: There is no indication of a downward trend in the global number of road fatalities, but estimations suggest that road traffic accidents might become the fifth leading cause of death by 2030 [6]. In absolute figures, the World Health Organisation estimates that about 1.24 million people lose their lives on the world’s roads per year. (As a comparison, the ten-years average in the number of fatalities from natural catastrophes worldwide is about 106,000 according to insurance statistics [7].)
This situation is unacceptable both from an economic and from an ethical point of view given the human suffering associated with fatal as well as with severe, life-changing injuries. Due to the importance and long-term nature of the Vision Zero objective, great efforts will be necessary in all phases of the road transport system’s innovation cycles to get close to this objective, including road safety research as a key factor. However, in times of economic crisis, public resources for research funding are limited, and the focus of publicly funded road transport research in Europe has moved away from safety topics towards the greening and in particular towards the electrification of road transport. In this situation, it is important to identify priorities, meaning those road safety research topics, which the available financial resources will be invested in most efficiently to bring about maximum benefits in terms of road safety. This applies to Europe, but also beyond: Since Europe is still a forerunner in road safety and the European transport industry is very export-oriented, safety innovations from Europe have the potential to reduce the accident, injury and fatality rates in other parts of the world, as well.
Against this backdrop, the need for a pan-European network capable of setting commonly agreed priorities in road safety research is obvious. This was the starting point of the PROS project.
Objectives and Approach
The main objective of the PROS project was the creation of a pan-European network with the ability to set commonly agreed priorities in European road safety research based on a holistic understanding of road safety. This means integrating road user, vehicle and infrastructure aspects, covering all phases from preventive to post-crash safety, addressing all available technologies and taking into account all road transport modes.
More specifically, PROS was to identify untapped or insufficiently explored road safety research areas which should be addressed in order to facilitate meeting future targets in road safety. Based on this analysis, it should develop a comprehensive roadmap for future road safety research in Europe, from which a limited number of concrete topics can be derived for inclusion in future research programmes. It also aimed at implementing the defined research priorities in the roadmaps and research agendas of other stakeholder groups and at improved networking among all groups of European road safety experts. Defining a process for the prioritisation of research topics in a multi-stakeholder group was a necessity to achieve the main objective of the project. At the same time, it was an objective on its own, which should form the basis for the long-term continuation of the networking and priorities setting activities beyond the duration of the project, thus contributing to keeping road safety on the relevant research agendas. The latter is facilitated by promoting the benefits of publicly funded road safety research in Europe as another objective of the PROS project reaching out to a wider audience than the road safety research community only.
The approach followed by the PROS project in order to achieve these objectives was based on the following principles:
Covering the research area as a whole: PROS was not limited to specific research directions in road safety, but covered all phases from normal driving to post-crash safety, all elements of the road transport system (human, vehicle and infrastructure), all road transport modes and all available technologies in an integrated approach.
Maximising involvement: Covering the research area as a whole required the involvement of a large number of experts from various stakeholder groups. 137 road safety research experts were finally included in the process giving them the possibility to make active contributions to the project. Fig. 1 gives an overview of the stakeholders represented by these experts.
Focusing on priorities: PROS did not only put together an exhaustive list of research needs, in which the inputs by a broad range of experts are represented, but, in addition to this, the project aimed at setting priorities. This was done by applying a commonly agreed process, so that the results could be accepted even by stakeholders whose own priorities deviated from the results of this process.
Creating transparency: Full transparency on decision processes was an important means to improve the credibility of results and to further ease their acceptance by experts who shared minority views.
Remote interaction between experts: Important decisions, in particular on research priorities, were based on remote interaction between experts and supported by circulating information and collecting feedback in electronic form keeping records of all inputs received. This was done in order to avoid the phenomenon of “group think” meaning that an eloquent or charismatic leader may make the participants in a physical meeting think in a certain direction and thus may have a big impact on the results of the meeting.
These basic principles were implemented in the PROS approach shown in Fig. 2, which also represents the work package (WP) structure of the project.
While the operational work of identifying existing gaps in road safety research, setting priorities, structuring them in a roadmap and disseminating them was done in WP1, WP2 and WP3, WP4 had the pivotal role of defining and monitoring the whole process as well as the methodology applied. The cyclic structure displayed in Fig. 2 is an illustration of the concept of running through this process twice: once in the first year and once in the second year of project duration. This concept facilitated the adoption of a time-efficient method in the first year (September 2012 - August 2013) in order to meet the European Commission’s time schedule for the definition of contents for the first calls in Horizon 2020. At the same time, it gave room for further developing the methodology in the second year based on the lessons learnt from the first year.
Project Results:
Process for the Development of Road Safety Research Priorities
The basic approach explained above was detailed into a process for the development of road safety research priorities, which can be applied, with minor adaptations, to other fields of transport research, as well. This process is shown in Fig. 3.
The first step in this process is the collection of relevant information, on which the definition of road safety research needs can be based. This includes an overview of relevant societal trends and scenarios, in which the outcomes of future research may be embedded, an inventory of running or recently completed road safety research projects as well as the analysis of existing road safety research roadmaps and agendas. Mapping the contents of these roadmaps and agendas with current research activities, overlaps as well as gaps or “white spots” in road safety research can be identified against the backdrop of future societal trends and scenarios. Inputs on future research needs by the coordinators of ongoing road safety research projects and other stakeholders are an important source of information in this context, too. The result is a comprehensive gross list of future research needs, which are clustered into a limited number of research topics. The contents of each topic are described in a one- to two-page document giving information on:
• Title of the topic
• Specific challenge to address
• Scope of the respective research
• Expected impacts
• Recommended type of action
• Specifics of the topic (if applicable)
According to the key elements of the road transport system, the topics are grouped into the four road safety research areas:
• Human
• Vehicle
• Infrastructure, traffic system & communication services
• Traffic safety analysis & assessment
Prioritisation is then done on the level of research topics within each of the four areas making use of an electronic questionnaire. In this questionnaire, each topic can be rated against three criteria by assigning a value between 1 (very low effect) and 4 (very high effect). The three criteria are listed in the following, each with a weighting factor given in brackets:
• Safety benefit (3)
• Effect on economic growth and job creation (2)
• Level of innovation (1)
A broad community of experts is invited to take part in the prioritisation of research topics by selecting their areas of expertise and filling in the questionnaire for the topics within these research areas. In case a partner cannot rate a specific topic against a particular criterion, this criterion can be disregarded for the specific topic.
For each topic and each criterion, the ratings by the individual experts are averaged. The total score of each topic is then calculated as the weighted sum of the three average ratings and given in percent with 0% being the lowest and 100% being the highest possible score, so that priorities can be defined within the four research areas mentioned above.
This prioritisation is done in two loops in order to enable experts to question their own ratings, take into account comments by other experts and clarify possible misunderstandings. For this purpose, experts are provided with the detailed outcomes of the first loop including, for each topic, a comparison of their own rating with the average rating of all participants. Based on this input, experts can easily identify topics which could be worth to re-consider and check if major deviations in the rating of a particular topic are due to actual differences in experts’ views or just to different understanding of the topic.
After two prioritisation loops, the prioritised topics are consolidated in a roadmap, in which they are broken down in different kinds of activity, such as
• Research
• Demonstration & pilot projects
• Regulatory framework & standards
• Market introduction
These activities are put in a logical sequence for each topic, and timelines are assigned to them taking into account:
• The score of the corresponding topic in the prioritisation process
(for positioning versus time within the respective road safety research area)
• Ongoing research projects on related topics
• Contents of current work programmes in transport research
Important milestones are added to each topic complementing the information on suggested starting points and on the expected duration of work on individual topics.
Since the whole process explained above was run through twice in the PROS project, it was possible to update the results, to further align their nature with the EC’s new concept of defining call topics in Horizon 2020 and also to refine the process in the second cycle. Such refinements are already taken into account in the process description above.
While this process follows all the five basic principles of the PROS approach, which are explained in the preceding chapter, particular attention was paid to maximising stakeholder involvement and creating transparency in the implementation of the process in the PROS project. Important tools in this context were regular e-mail communications to a community of finally 137 road safety research experts as well as a total of seven physical workshops, which were organised by the project in order to:
• Collect feedback and further inputs to societal trends and scenarios, current road safety research projects as well as existing research roadmaps and agendas
• Identify “white spots” and future road safety research needs
• Cluster road safety research topics
• Review topic descriptions
• Come to an agreement on the positioning of topics versus time in the roadmap
Moreover, all important interim results were circulated for review to a wide range of stakeholders and refined iteratively, such as the overview of road safety research projects and relevant research agendas, the initial list of road safety research needs, the topic descriptions and the draft PROS roadmap.
From a methodological point of view, the process described above makes use of key elements of the Delphi method, in particular for a well-founded, transparent prioritisation of research topics. Examples of such elements are: structured communication, remote interaction, collecting feedback in at least two rounds and allowing for the revision of earlier answers in the light of the replies from other experts. More details on the applied process can be taken from deliverable 4.3 of the PROS project [8].
Information Base for the Development of Road Safety Research Priorities
In order to provide the PROS project with a good understanding of the potential environment in which the outcomes of future road safety research may have to be embedded, existing reports on societal scenarios and trends were studied. Seven major trends could be identified as the most relevant ones for PROS:
1. Population growth
2. Demographic changes
3. Urbanisation
4. Fast growing cities
5. Rising awareness of CO2 emissions, climate change and environmental pollution
6. Increasing demand for and price of energy and other resources
7. Connectivity
These trends were further analysed with respect to their potential impact on road safety. As a consequence, the following aspects should be addressed in the research recommendations by PROS:
• Older road users
• Growing cities
• A more diverse traffic mix
• Effects resulting from efforts to meet the CO2 emission reduction targets
• Increased connectivity (of persons and things)
• Time for penetration of new technologies into the transportation system
• No focus on Europe only – most of the expected growth of transport volume will take place in the other parts of the world
With the latter point in mind, the review of existing road safety research roadmaps and agendas included selected national and international documents in addition to European ones. The following list gives an overview of the relevant roadmaps and agendas which were analysed by PROS:
• China road traffic safety – the achievements, the challenges and the way ahead,
World Bank working paper, 2008
• Road safety strategic plan 2008 - 2020,
the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, 2008
• Strategic research agenda by the European Technology Platform on Smart Systems Integration (EPoSS), 2009
• Moving forward – 2010 - 2015 strategic roadmap, Euro NCAP, 2009
• Future of transport: ERF strategic road infrastructure priorities – beyond 2010, position paper by the European Union Road Federation (ERF), 2009
• Strategic research agenda – ICT for intelligent mobility,
the eSafety Forum, 2010
• White paper on traffic safety in Japan 2010, the Japanese Cabinet Office
• Pedestrian safety strategic plan: recommendations for research and product development,
submitted to the United States Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, 2010
• European roadmap safe road transport,
ERTRAC Working Group Road Transport Safety & Security, 2011
• ARTEMIS strategic research agenda, 2011
• New services enabled by the connected car,
final report for the European Commission, SMART 2010/0065, 2011
• Verkehrssicherheitsprogramm 2011, the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development
• NHTSA vehicle safety and fuel economy rulemaking and research priority plan 2011 - 2013, 2011
• Road Safety is no accident – synthesis report of four working groups on education, enforcement, engineering and emergency care constituted under the National Road Safety Council, Indian Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, 2011
• National road safety strategy 2011 - 2020, the Australian Transport Council 2011
• Further advances in road safety – importance for European transport research,
position paper by the European Automotive Research Partners Association (EARPA), 2012
• ETSC comments on Horizon 2020, 2012
• The main research directions in ten years,
scientific strategy by IFSTTAR, 2012
• Strategic roadmap for traffic safety within FFI (Swedish national funding programme for research, innovation and development), 2012
• Preliminary road safety research agenda, UK Department for Transport, 2013
• ERTRAC multi-annual implementation plan for Horizon 2020, 2013
• The adaptable road: A roadmap for research – an element of the forever open road,
the Federation of European National Highway Research Laboratories (FEHRL), 2013
• The automated road: A roadmap for research – an element of the forever open road,
the Federation of European National Highway Research Laboratories (FEHRL), 2013
• CLEPA safety research roadmap – towards Vision Zero, 2013
• Roadmap document by the EUCAR strategic pillar group “Safe and integrated mobility”, expert group: safety, 2013
• Roadmap document by the EUCAR strategic pillar group “Safe and integrated mobility”, expert group: driver-vehicle dialogue, 2013
• Automation in road transport, roadmap by the iMobility Forum, 2013
• Recommendations for 2014 - 2015 research needs, iMobility Forum, 2013
In addition to these documents, current road safety research projects were reviewed in order to identify recent progress and further research needs. All in all, 109 projects primarily from the EC’s Sventh Framework Programme and from national programmes were analysed. This specialist review was complemented by direct contacts to the coordinators of selected ongoing or recently completed road safety research projects, who were asked to provide insights into remaining research needs in the context of their current projects.
The research needs extracted from the existing roadmaps and agendas, if not already covered by current projects, the feedback from the project coordinators and a number of new research ideas gathered from several stakeholders in a dedicated PROS workshop formed the basis of a detailed list of road safety research needs already in the first cycle of the project. This list was circulated in several iteration loops to the consortium members, associate partners as well as external stakeholders involved in PROS and completed with their inputs, until a convergence of contributions was finally observed: Inputs were more and more concerning very detailed aspects, suggesting changes also proposed by other partners, requesting minor modifications, or simply expressing agreement.
The full list of more than 300 specific road safety research needs is available in deliverable 2.1 of the PROS project [9]. Together with the other information from the review of societal trends and scenarios, relevant research agendas and roadmaps as well as current road safety research projects, it forms a comprehensive information base for the development of road safety research priorities. Most of this information is summarised in deliverable 1.3 [10] and its update D1.4 [11], while additional details can be taken from D1.1 [12] and D1.2 [13].
Road Safety Research Priorities and Roadmap
Starting from the information base described in the preceding chapter, priorities in road safety research were developed by the PROS project. For this purpose, the entries in the full list of research needs were clustered in 52 road safety research topics in the first cycle of the project. Further condensation into eleven aggregated topics in the second cycle finally resulted in broad research challenges in line with the EC’s concept of defining call topics in Horizon 2020.
Fig. 4 gives an overview of the eleven thematic clusters and the individual topics allocated to them within the four road safety research areas already mentioned in the process description. Some topics occur in this overview more than once, as they contain aspects of various thematic clusters. The titles of the eleven aggregated topics in Fig. 4 already aim at the reflection of benefits to society and to competitiveness which the respective research is expected to bring about. Specific links to relevant political objectives, in particular from the EC’s policy orientations on road safety [14], were included in the full-text descriptions of these aggregated topics. These descriptions are included in the annex of this report. They provide comparatively high-level information on the specific challenges to address and on the scope of the respective research, thus giving room for various research focuses within each aggregated topic. Additional details on possible directions of research can be taken from the more specific descriptions of the 52 underlying topics, which are included in the deliverable 2.2 of the PROS project [15].
Prioritisation of the aggregated topics was done in two loops according to the process described above. A total of 41 organisations including consortium members, associate partners and external stakeholders took part in the prioritisation process, among them several associations which engaged on behalf of a multitude of member organisations. From the names of the consulted experts, which partners were asked to provide, the conclusion can be drawn that about 120 experts delivered their inputs to the prioritisation process. The following list gives an overview of all stakeholders who participated in the prioritisation of the aggregated road safety research topics from the PROS project:
• ACEM − Association des Constructeurs Européens de Motocycles
• AIT − the Austrian Institute of Technology
• Autoliv Development AB
• BASt – the Federal Highway Research Institute
• BRRC – the Belgian Road Research Centre
• CDV – the (Czech) Transport Research Centre
• CIDAUT – the Foundation for Transport and Energy Research and Development
• Continental Teves AG & Co. oHG
• CRF – Centro Ricerche FIAT S.C.p.A.
• CSIR – Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
• Daimler AG
• DNDI – Shulgin State Road Research Institute
• DRD – the Danish Road Directorate
• ECF − the European Cyclists’ Federation
• ECTRI – the European Conference of Transport Research Institutes
• EPFL – École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
• ERF – the European Union Road Federation
• EUCAR – the European Council for Automotive R&D
• FEHRL – the Forum of European National Highway Research Laboratories
• Ford Werke GmbH
• fka – Forschungsgesellschaft Kraftfahrwesen mbH Aachen
• HUMANIST Virtual Centre of Excellence
• IDIADA Automotive Technology SA
• IFSTTAR – the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks
• IRF – the International Road Federation
• ISN – the Integrated Safety Network
• KTI – Institute for Transport Sciences Non-profit Ltd.
• LMU – Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
• LVCELI – Latvian State Roads
• National Technical University of Athens
• Robert Bosch GmbH
• RRI – the Road Research Institute of Vilnius Gediminas Technical University
• RWS – Rijkswaterstaat
• SAFER – Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre at Chalmers University of Technology
• SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research
• TECER – Technical Center of Estonian Roads Ltd
• TNO – Nederlandse Organisatie voor toegepast-natuurwetenschappelijk onderzoek
• TRL – the Transport Research Laboratory
• Graz University of Technology
• University of Florence
• Volvo Group Trucks Technology
The analysis of all filled-in questionnaires revealed that many partners actually made use of the possibility to focus on the topics where they saw their main fields of expertise. The main results of this analysis are summarised in Fig. 5. The values in the table indicate the score of each aggregated topic in percent of the best possible score, which would be reached, if all participants assigned a “very high effect” to a particular topic against the respective criterion. The bar diagrams visualise the weighted total scores with the red square showing the mean value and the light section of the respective bar indicating the variation about the mean.
The moderate differences between the scores of the aggregated topics within each research area indicate as an important outcome that none of them is clearly irrelevant. Therefore, the decision was taken to include all the eleven aggregated topics in the final PROS roadmap, but to reflect their relative priorities in the timing of topics in this roadmap.
Following a similar format as applied by ERTRAC in its existing research roadmaps, the final PROS roadmap does not only provide information on suggested starting points and on the expected duration of work on individual road safety research topics. Following the process description above, it also provides information on important milestones for each aggregated topic and distinguishes four different kinds of activity under each topic. These activities are indicated by coloured arrows in the final PROS roadmap, which is shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7. Complemented by the descriptions of the aggregated research topics in the annex, this roadmap represents a key result of the PROS project.
The year in which the respective research is scheduled to start according to Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 refers to the work programme in Horizon 2020 in which PROS recommends including the corresponding research topic. This allocation of topics is based on the assumption, that the main road safety research needs covered by the Transport Work Programme 2014 will finally be addressed by funded projects. Otherwise, the topic “vehicle technology for two-wheeler safety” as well as the two topics from the research area “Traffic safety analysis & assessment” would become candidates for inclusion in the Work Programme 2016/2017, as indicated by the light sections of the corresponding arrows.
Apart from that, an important conclusion from the roadmap is the recommendation to include the following six research topics in the upcoming work programmes:
• Behaviour in traffic – Making us safer road users
• Technological leadership in safe future vehicles – Improving protection in crashes
• Safe roads design – Making them self-explaining and forgiving to the benefit of all road users
• Improving protection in crashes – Counteracting our fragility
• Technological leadership in safe future vehicles – From assisted to automated driving
• Innovation in ITS infrastructure for road safety – Making use of the connected world
The first three topics are recommended as elements of road safety, behavioural and infrastructure-related research for 2016, the last three – two of them ITS-related – for 2017.
Continuation of Activities
The PROS project has been the first initiative in which a process for the definition of research priorities with this degree of transparency has been established in a European multi-stakeholder network covering road safety research as a whole. To continue this work beyond the duration of the PROS project, different options were investigated. The continuation mechanism sought for should:
• build on the basic principles of the PROS approach:
o covering the research area as a whole
o maximising involvement
o focusing on priorities
o creating transparency
o remote interaction between experts
• handle relations with all relevant stakeholders related to road users, vehicles and infrastructure
• provide an organisational and decision structure
• continue the core activities:
o keeping the roadmap updated
o promoting research activities
o maintaining a continuous link between all interested stakeholders
• provide solutions to raise funding to cover the related expenses
Possible alternatives which were analysed to continue the process at the end of the PROS project are summarised in Table 1.
ERTRAC was approached and initial meetings were held from July 2013 onwards with responsible persons within ERTRAC and the FOSTER-Road project which is supporting the ERTRAC activities as a coordination action. An agreement was finally reached in April 2014 between ERTRAC and PROS representatives to work towards the continuation of the PROS activities under the umbrella of a re-established ERTRAC Working Group Road Transport Safety & Security. Accordingly, the ERTRAC working group should build on PROS results and be open to all PROS partners. Several PROS partners have also expressed their willingness to take on significant roles in this working group.
The first two meetings of the re-established ERTRAC safety working group were held in June and November 2014 with the vast majority of participants representing PROS partners. While a good basis for cooperation was established and core elements of PROS priorities implemented in ERTRAC recommendations, a continued dialogue with the ERTRAC management and its safety working group is recommended with the aim to integrate the basic principles of PROS mentioned above optimally within the ERTRAC approach.
Potential Impact:
The dissemination strategy of the PROS project focused on organisations identified as important stakeholders in European road safety, such as the automotive industry, regulatory bodies, authorities, the scientific community, technology platforms and road users in general. Accordingly, the dissemination activities of the project were aimed at spreading the results and recommendations acquired during the project to this audience and in particular to the stakeholders who could contribute to the main objective of the project: the creation of a pan-European network capable of setting commonly agreed priorities in European road safety research. To reach this goal, the following dissemination tools were realised in order to ensure good coverage of the available communication media:
• Internet website, including a storage space for deliverables from the project
• "PROS project group" at the professional network LinkedIn, easily accessible from the homepage of the project
• Newsletters providing up-to-date information about the activities performed, presenting current achievements and announcing relevant events
• Leaflets explaining the background, objectives and approach of PROS (first leaflet) and introducing the final list of road safety research priorities (second leaflet)
• Posters giving an overview on the concept of the project, the methodology applied and the main results at various public events and conferences.
Moreover, presentations on the PROS project were held at various conferences and stakeholder meetings, as listed in the following:
- 2nd meeting of the iMobility Forum VRU Working Group, Brussels, 27 September 2012
- CLEPA GrIP Meeting, Brussels, 6 November 2012
- ERTRAC 10 Years Anniversary Conference, Brussels, 6 March 2013
- iMobility Forum Recommendations Workshop, Brussels, 19 March 2013
- 3rd iMobility Forum Plenary Meeting, Brussels, 16 April 2013
- 4th Meeting of the iMobility Forum VRU WG, Brussels, 18 April 2013
- ESV Conference, Seoul, 27 May 2013
- DECOMOBIL Workshop “Roadmap of ICT Design for Clean and Efficient Multimodal Mobility”, Munich, 28 May 2013
- 21st EARPA Task Force Safety Meeting, Brussels, 11 June 2013
- EXCROSS Symposium, Torino, 18 October 2013
- FOSTER-ROAD Consortium Meeting, Brussels, 29 January 2014
- VDA Technical Congress, Hannover, 20 March 2014
- 23rd EARPA Task Force Safety Meeting, Brussels, 31 March 2014
- TRA Conference, Paris, 16 April 2014
- iMobility Forum Working Group R&I Meeting, Brussels, 15 May 2014
- GMTTB Conference, Constance, 3 June 2014
- FISITA World Automotive Congress, Maastricht, 5 June 2014
- ITS European Congress, Helsinki, 17 June 2014
- CLEPA R&I Working Group Meeting, Berlin, 25 June 2014
- Meeting of the ERTRAC Working Group “Road Transport Safety & Security”, Brussels, 27 June 2014
- EUCAR Programme Board Meeting “Safe and Integrated Mobility”, Brussels, 1 October 2014
- 8th Meeting of the iMobility Forum VRU Working Group, Brussels, 18 November 2014
- Meeting of the ERTRAC Working Group “Road Transport Safety & Security”, Brussels, 21 November 2014
At the FISITA World Automotive Congress and the ITS European Congress special sessions were organised by PROS partners, which offered additional room not only for the dissemination of project results, but also for the exchange with other stakeholders.
These dissemination tools and activities were complemented by a press release summarising the project results which were considered most interesting to the general public.
Dissemination activities are still continuing beyond the official running time of the project, in order to ensure the uptake of results by important stakeholders. In this context, ERTRAC has been of particular importance, since its Working Group Road Transport Safety & Security was identified as the most suitable structure to continue the activities of PROS beyond the duration of the project. With an overwhelming participation of PROS partners in the first two meetings of this ERTRAC Working Group since its reactivation in summer 2014, this mechanism for the continuation of activities is making good progress. Actually, PROS results have already been fed effectively into these meetings and are well reflected in the Working Group’s outputs in December 2014. This will continue with the project coordinator and other key PROS partners playing active roles within this ERTRAC Working Group and making sure that basic principles from the PROS process area are adopted there.
As another important exploitable result, the process for the definition of research priorities which was developed in PROS on the basis of the aforementioned principles is applicable not only to road safety research and therefore expected to have an impact on the definition of priorities in other research areas, too. At the same time, the information base for the development of road safety research priorities from PROS will be a valuable tool mainly for other initiatives on research programming in this particular field of research.
In addition to addressing relevant stakeholder associations, PROS has also been disseminating its results directly to the European Commission’s directorates general, in particular DG RTD and DG MOVE. Project partners call on the Commission to take these results into account when defining the contents of future Transport Work Programmes in Horizon 2020, as they reflect the views of a very broad range of stakeholders in road safety research and have been developed in a process of utmost transparency. PROS can then effectively help to optimise the use of public funding for performing relevant road safety research in collaborative projects by selecting the right thematic priorities. This will finally contribute to maximise the return on investment in road safety research, both in terms of reduced human suffering and in terms of reduced economic loss from road accidents.
List of Websites:
Public website:
www.pros-project.eu
Contact details:
Dr.-Ing. Peter Urban
Forschungsgesellschaft Kraftfahrwesen mbH Aachen
Steinbachstraße 7 – 52074 Aachen – Germany
Phone: +49 241 80 27015
Fax: +49 241 8861 110
E-mail: urban@fka.de
About 120 experts from more than 40 stakeholder organisations have contributed to the development of a comprehensive European road safety research roadmap within the two years of running time of the PROS support action. This roadmap is presented in this final report (cf. Fig. 6 and Fig. 7) together with the contents of the eleven prioritised research topics contained therein (cf. annex).
Moreover, this report gives an insight into the background of the project, its specific objectives, its structure and the basic principles followed: covering road safety as a whole, maximising involvement, focusing on priorities, creating transparency and basing important decisions on remote interaction between experts. Following these principles was facilitated by a clearly defined process for setting research priorities, which was developed by the project as a key deliverable and can be applied, with minor adaptations, to other fields of transport research, as well.
According to this process, a comprehensive information base for the development of road safety research priorities was put together by the PROS project, which contains information on relevant societal trends and scenarios, existing road safety research agendas and roadmaps as well as current research activities in this field. About 30 research agendas and roadmaps and more than 100 projects were analysed in the preparation of this information base, which can be made use of by future initiatives in road safety research programming, too. The process for the prioritisation of research topics in a multi-stakeholder group and the related information base are also described in this report.
From the road safety research roadmap developed by PROS, key recommendations for the upcoming Transport Work Programmes in Horizon 2020 can be derived:
For the Transport Work Programme 2016, PROS recommends to include the following topics as important elements of road safety, behavioural and infrastructure-related research:
• Behaviour in traffic – Making us safer road users
• Technological leadership in safe future vehicles – Improving protection in crashes
• Safe roads design – Making them self-explaining and forgiving to the benefit of all road users
For 2017, the following road safety and ITS-related topics are recommended:
• Improving protection in crashes – Counteracting our fragility
• Technological leadership in safe future vehicles – From assisted to automated driving
• Innovation in ITS infrastructure for road safety – Making use of the connected world
These recommendations are based on the assumption, that the main road safety research needs covered by the Transport Work Programme 2014 will finally be addressed by funded projects. Otherwise, the topic “Vehicle technology for two-wheeler safety” and research on “Traffic safety analysis & assessment” should be considered for inclusion in 2016/2017, too.
In order to disseminate the basic project concept, the recommendations above as well as further results, more than 20 presentations on the PROS project and its outcomes have been given at conferences and stakeholder meetings since the project start.
All in all, the PROS project has been the first initiative in which a process for the definition of research priorities with this degree of transparency has been established in a European multi-stakeholder network covering road safety research as a whole. Following the analysis of different options for continuation, PROS activities are now carried on under the umbrella of the ERTRAC Working Group Road Transport Safety & Security with the ambition of integrating the basic principles of PROS in the ERTRAC approach and building on the PROS results.
Project Context and Objectives:
Project Context
Europe has made great advances in road safety over the last decades, but with 28,126 fatalities in 2012 [1], the EU is still far away from the long-term objective of Vision Zero as adopted by the European Commission and by important European stakeholder organisations [2], [3], [4], [5]. In a global perspective, this vision of a road transport system in which nobody is killed or severely injured anymore is even more challenging, as worldwide road safety statistics are alarming: There is no indication of a downward trend in the global number of road fatalities, but estimations suggest that road traffic accidents might become the fifth leading cause of death by 2030 [6]. In absolute figures, the World Health Organisation estimates that about 1.24 million people lose their lives on the world’s roads per year. (As a comparison, the ten-years average in the number of fatalities from natural catastrophes worldwide is about 106,000 according to insurance statistics [7].)
This situation is unacceptable both from an economic and from an ethical point of view given the human suffering associated with fatal as well as with severe, life-changing injuries. Due to the importance and long-term nature of the Vision Zero objective, great efforts will be necessary in all phases of the road transport system’s innovation cycles to get close to this objective, including road safety research as a key factor. However, in times of economic crisis, public resources for research funding are limited, and the focus of publicly funded road transport research in Europe has moved away from safety topics towards the greening and in particular towards the electrification of road transport. In this situation, it is important to identify priorities, meaning those road safety research topics, which the available financial resources will be invested in most efficiently to bring about maximum benefits in terms of road safety. This applies to Europe, but also beyond: Since Europe is still a forerunner in road safety and the European transport industry is very export-oriented, safety innovations from Europe have the potential to reduce the accident, injury and fatality rates in other parts of the world, as well.
Against this backdrop, the need for a pan-European network capable of setting commonly agreed priorities in road safety research is obvious. This was the starting point of the PROS project.
Objectives and Approach
The main objective of the PROS project was the creation of a pan-European network with the ability to set commonly agreed priorities in European road safety research based on a holistic understanding of road safety. This means integrating road user, vehicle and infrastructure aspects, covering all phases from preventive to post-crash safety, addressing all available technologies and taking into account all road transport modes.
More specifically, PROS was to identify untapped or insufficiently explored road safety research areas which should be addressed in order to facilitate meeting future targets in road safety. Based on this analysis, it should develop a comprehensive roadmap for future road safety research in Europe, from which a limited number of concrete topics can be derived for inclusion in future research programmes. It also aimed at implementing the defined research priorities in the roadmaps and research agendas of other stakeholder groups and at improved networking among all groups of European road safety experts. Defining a process for the prioritisation of research topics in a multi-stakeholder group was a necessity to achieve the main objective of the project. At the same time, it was an objective on its own, which should form the basis for the long-term continuation of the networking and priorities setting activities beyond the duration of the project, thus contributing to keeping road safety on the relevant research agendas. The latter is facilitated by promoting the benefits of publicly funded road safety research in Europe as another objective of the PROS project reaching out to a wider audience than the road safety research community only.
The approach followed by the PROS project in order to achieve these objectives was based on the following principles:
Covering the research area as a whole: PROS was not limited to specific research directions in road safety, but covered all phases from normal driving to post-crash safety, all elements of the road transport system (human, vehicle and infrastructure), all road transport modes and all available technologies in an integrated approach.
Maximising involvement: Covering the research area as a whole required the involvement of a large number of experts from various stakeholder groups. 137 road safety research experts were finally included in the process giving them the possibility to make active contributions to the project. Fig. 1 gives an overview of the stakeholders represented by these experts.
Focusing on priorities: PROS did not only put together an exhaustive list of research needs, in which the inputs by a broad range of experts are represented, but, in addition to this, the project aimed at setting priorities. This was done by applying a commonly agreed process, so that the results could be accepted even by stakeholders whose own priorities deviated from the results of this process.
Creating transparency: Full transparency on decision processes was an important means to improve the credibility of results and to further ease their acceptance by experts who shared minority views.
Remote interaction between experts: Important decisions, in particular on research priorities, were based on remote interaction between experts and supported by circulating information and collecting feedback in electronic form keeping records of all inputs received. This was done in order to avoid the phenomenon of “group think” meaning that an eloquent or charismatic leader may make the participants in a physical meeting think in a certain direction and thus may have a big impact on the results of the meeting.
These basic principles were implemented in the PROS approach shown in Fig. 2, which also represents the work package (WP) structure of the project.
While the operational work of identifying existing gaps in road safety research, setting priorities, structuring them in a roadmap and disseminating them was done in WP1, WP2 and WP3, WP4 had the pivotal role of defining and monitoring the whole process as well as the methodology applied. The cyclic structure displayed in Fig. 2 is an illustration of the concept of running through this process twice: once in the first year and once in the second year of project duration. This concept facilitated the adoption of a time-efficient method in the first year (September 2012 - August 2013) in order to meet the European Commission’s time schedule for the definition of contents for the first calls in Horizon 2020. At the same time, it gave room for further developing the methodology in the second year based on the lessons learnt from the first year.
Project Results:
Process for the Development of Road Safety Research Priorities
The basic approach explained above was detailed into a process for the development of road safety research priorities, which can be applied, with minor adaptations, to other fields of transport research, as well. This process is shown in Fig. 3.
The first step in this process is the collection of relevant information, on which the definition of road safety research needs can be based. This includes an overview of relevant societal trends and scenarios, in which the outcomes of future research may be embedded, an inventory of running or recently completed road safety research projects as well as the analysis of existing road safety research roadmaps and agendas. Mapping the contents of these roadmaps and agendas with current research activities, overlaps as well as gaps or “white spots” in road safety research can be identified against the backdrop of future societal trends and scenarios. Inputs on future research needs by the coordinators of ongoing road safety research projects and other stakeholders are an important source of information in this context, too. The result is a comprehensive gross list of future research needs, which are clustered into a limited number of research topics. The contents of each topic are described in a one- to two-page document giving information on:
• Title of the topic
• Specific challenge to address
• Scope of the respective research
• Expected impacts
• Recommended type of action
• Specifics of the topic (if applicable)
According to the key elements of the road transport system, the topics are grouped into the four road safety research areas:
• Human
• Vehicle
• Infrastructure, traffic system & communication services
• Traffic safety analysis & assessment
Prioritisation is then done on the level of research topics within each of the four areas making use of an electronic questionnaire. In this questionnaire, each topic can be rated against three criteria by assigning a value between 1 (very low effect) and 4 (very high effect). The three criteria are listed in the following, each with a weighting factor given in brackets:
• Safety benefit (3)
• Effect on economic growth and job creation (2)
• Level of innovation (1)
A broad community of experts is invited to take part in the prioritisation of research topics by selecting their areas of expertise and filling in the questionnaire for the topics within these research areas. In case a partner cannot rate a specific topic against a particular criterion, this criterion can be disregarded for the specific topic.
For each topic and each criterion, the ratings by the individual experts are averaged. The total score of each topic is then calculated as the weighted sum of the three average ratings and given in percent with 0% being the lowest and 100% being the highest possible score, so that priorities can be defined within the four research areas mentioned above.
This prioritisation is done in two loops in order to enable experts to question their own ratings, take into account comments by other experts and clarify possible misunderstandings. For this purpose, experts are provided with the detailed outcomes of the first loop including, for each topic, a comparison of their own rating with the average rating of all participants. Based on this input, experts can easily identify topics which could be worth to re-consider and check if major deviations in the rating of a particular topic are due to actual differences in experts’ views or just to different understanding of the topic.
After two prioritisation loops, the prioritised topics are consolidated in a roadmap, in which they are broken down in different kinds of activity, such as
• Research
• Demonstration & pilot projects
• Regulatory framework & standards
• Market introduction
These activities are put in a logical sequence for each topic, and timelines are assigned to them taking into account:
• The score of the corresponding topic in the prioritisation process
(for positioning versus time within the respective road safety research area)
• Ongoing research projects on related topics
• Contents of current work programmes in transport research
Important milestones are added to each topic complementing the information on suggested starting points and on the expected duration of work on individual topics.
Since the whole process explained above was run through twice in the PROS project, it was possible to update the results, to further align their nature with the EC’s new concept of defining call topics in Horizon 2020 and also to refine the process in the second cycle. Such refinements are already taken into account in the process description above.
While this process follows all the five basic principles of the PROS approach, which are explained in the preceding chapter, particular attention was paid to maximising stakeholder involvement and creating transparency in the implementation of the process in the PROS project. Important tools in this context were regular e-mail communications to a community of finally 137 road safety research experts as well as a total of seven physical workshops, which were organised by the project in order to:
• Collect feedback and further inputs to societal trends and scenarios, current road safety research projects as well as existing research roadmaps and agendas
• Identify “white spots” and future road safety research needs
• Cluster road safety research topics
• Review topic descriptions
• Come to an agreement on the positioning of topics versus time in the roadmap
Moreover, all important interim results were circulated for review to a wide range of stakeholders and refined iteratively, such as the overview of road safety research projects and relevant research agendas, the initial list of road safety research needs, the topic descriptions and the draft PROS roadmap.
From a methodological point of view, the process described above makes use of key elements of the Delphi method, in particular for a well-founded, transparent prioritisation of research topics. Examples of such elements are: structured communication, remote interaction, collecting feedback in at least two rounds and allowing for the revision of earlier answers in the light of the replies from other experts. More details on the applied process can be taken from deliverable 4.3 of the PROS project [8].
Information Base for the Development of Road Safety Research Priorities
In order to provide the PROS project with a good understanding of the potential environment in which the outcomes of future road safety research may have to be embedded, existing reports on societal scenarios and trends were studied. Seven major trends could be identified as the most relevant ones for PROS:
1. Population growth
2. Demographic changes
3. Urbanisation
4. Fast growing cities
5. Rising awareness of CO2 emissions, climate change and environmental pollution
6. Increasing demand for and price of energy and other resources
7. Connectivity
These trends were further analysed with respect to their potential impact on road safety. As a consequence, the following aspects should be addressed in the research recommendations by PROS:
• Older road users
• Growing cities
• A more diverse traffic mix
• Effects resulting from efforts to meet the CO2 emission reduction targets
• Increased connectivity (of persons and things)
• Time for penetration of new technologies into the transportation system
• No focus on Europe only – most of the expected growth of transport volume will take place in the other parts of the world
With the latter point in mind, the review of existing road safety research roadmaps and agendas included selected national and international documents in addition to European ones. The following list gives an overview of the relevant roadmaps and agendas which were analysed by PROS:
• China road traffic safety – the achievements, the challenges and the way ahead,
World Bank working paper, 2008
• Road safety strategic plan 2008 - 2020,
the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, 2008
• Strategic research agenda by the European Technology Platform on Smart Systems Integration (EPoSS), 2009
• Moving forward – 2010 - 2015 strategic roadmap, Euro NCAP, 2009
• Future of transport: ERF strategic road infrastructure priorities – beyond 2010, position paper by the European Union Road Federation (ERF), 2009
• Strategic research agenda – ICT for intelligent mobility,
the eSafety Forum, 2010
• White paper on traffic safety in Japan 2010, the Japanese Cabinet Office
• Pedestrian safety strategic plan: recommendations for research and product development,
submitted to the United States Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, 2010
• European roadmap safe road transport,
ERTRAC Working Group Road Transport Safety & Security, 2011
• ARTEMIS strategic research agenda, 2011
• New services enabled by the connected car,
final report for the European Commission, SMART 2010/0065, 2011
• Verkehrssicherheitsprogramm 2011, the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development
• NHTSA vehicle safety and fuel economy rulemaking and research priority plan 2011 - 2013, 2011
• Road Safety is no accident – synthesis report of four working groups on education, enforcement, engineering and emergency care constituted under the National Road Safety Council, Indian Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, 2011
• National road safety strategy 2011 - 2020, the Australian Transport Council 2011
• Further advances in road safety – importance for European transport research,
position paper by the European Automotive Research Partners Association (EARPA), 2012
• ETSC comments on Horizon 2020, 2012
• The main research directions in ten years,
scientific strategy by IFSTTAR, 2012
• Strategic roadmap for traffic safety within FFI (Swedish national funding programme for research, innovation and development), 2012
• Preliminary road safety research agenda, UK Department for Transport, 2013
• ERTRAC multi-annual implementation plan for Horizon 2020, 2013
• The adaptable road: A roadmap for research – an element of the forever open road,
the Federation of European National Highway Research Laboratories (FEHRL), 2013
• The automated road: A roadmap for research – an element of the forever open road,
the Federation of European National Highway Research Laboratories (FEHRL), 2013
• CLEPA safety research roadmap – towards Vision Zero, 2013
• Roadmap document by the EUCAR strategic pillar group “Safe and integrated mobility”, expert group: safety, 2013
• Roadmap document by the EUCAR strategic pillar group “Safe and integrated mobility”, expert group: driver-vehicle dialogue, 2013
• Automation in road transport, roadmap by the iMobility Forum, 2013
• Recommendations for 2014 - 2015 research needs, iMobility Forum, 2013
In addition to these documents, current road safety research projects were reviewed in order to identify recent progress and further research needs. All in all, 109 projects primarily from the EC’s Sventh Framework Programme and from national programmes were analysed. This specialist review was complemented by direct contacts to the coordinators of selected ongoing or recently completed road safety research projects, who were asked to provide insights into remaining research needs in the context of their current projects.
The research needs extracted from the existing roadmaps and agendas, if not already covered by current projects, the feedback from the project coordinators and a number of new research ideas gathered from several stakeholders in a dedicated PROS workshop formed the basis of a detailed list of road safety research needs already in the first cycle of the project. This list was circulated in several iteration loops to the consortium members, associate partners as well as external stakeholders involved in PROS and completed with their inputs, until a convergence of contributions was finally observed: Inputs were more and more concerning very detailed aspects, suggesting changes also proposed by other partners, requesting minor modifications, or simply expressing agreement.
The full list of more than 300 specific road safety research needs is available in deliverable 2.1 of the PROS project [9]. Together with the other information from the review of societal trends and scenarios, relevant research agendas and roadmaps as well as current road safety research projects, it forms a comprehensive information base for the development of road safety research priorities. Most of this information is summarised in deliverable 1.3 [10] and its update D1.4 [11], while additional details can be taken from D1.1 [12] and D1.2 [13].
Road Safety Research Priorities and Roadmap
Starting from the information base described in the preceding chapter, priorities in road safety research were developed by the PROS project. For this purpose, the entries in the full list of research needs were clustered in 52 road safety research topics in the first cycle of the project. Further condensation into eleven aggregated topics in the second cycle finally resulted in broad research challenges in line with the EC’s concept of defining call topics in Horizon 2020.
Fig. 4 gives an overview of the eleven thematic clusters and the individual topics allocated to them within the four road safety research areas already mentioned in the process description. Some topics occur in this overview more than once, as they contain aspects of various thematic clusters. The titles of the eleven aggregated topics in Fig. 4 already aim at the reflection of benefits to society and to competitiveness which the respective research is expected to bring about. Specific links to relevant political objectives, in particular from the EC’s policy orientations on road safety [14], were included in the full-text descriptions of these aggregated topics. These descriptions are included in the annex of this report. They provide comparatively high-level information on the specific challenges to address and on the scope of the respective research, thus giving room for various research focuses within each aggregated topic. Additional details on possible directions of research can be taken from the more specific descriptions of the 52 underlying topics, which are included in the deliverable 2.2 of the PROS project [15].
Prioritisation of the aggregated topics was done in two loops according to the process described above. A total of 41 organisations including consortium members, associate partners and external stakeholders took part in the prioritisation process, among them several associations which engaged on behalf of a multitude of member organisations. From the names of the consulted experts, which partners were asked to provide, the conclusion can be drawn that about 120 experts delivered their inputs to the prioritisation process. The following list gives an overview of all stakeholders who participated in the prioritisation of the aggregated road safety research topics from the PROS project:
• ACEM − Association des Constructeurs Européens de Motocycles
• AIT − the Austrian Institute of Technology
• Autoliv Development AB
• BASt – the Federal Highway Research Institute
• BRRC – the Belgian Road Research Centre
• CDV – the (Czech) Transport Research Centre
• CIDAUT – the Foundation for Transport and Energy Research and Development
• Continental Teves AG & Co. oHG
• CRF – Centro Ricerche FIAT S.C.p.A.
• CSIR – Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
• Daimler AG
• DNDI – Shulgin State Road Research Institute
• DRD – the Danish Road Directorate
• ECF − the European Cyclists’ Federation
• ECTRI – the European Conference of Transport Research Institutes
• EPFL – École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
• ERF – the European Union Road Federation
• EUCAR – the European Council for Automotive R&D
• FEHRL – the Forum of European National Highway Research Laboratories
• Ford Werke GmbH
• fka – Forschungsgesellschaft Kraftfahrwesen mbH Aachen
• HUMANIST Virtual Centre of Excellence
• IDIADA Automotive Technology SA
• IFSTTAR – the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks
• IRF – the International Road Federation
• ISN – the Integrated Safety Network
• KTI – Institute for Transport Sciences Non-profit Ltd.
• LMU – Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
• LVCELI – Latvian State Roads
• National Technical University of Athens
• Robert Bosch GmbH
• RRI – the Road Research Institute of Vilnius Gediminas Technical University
• RWS – Rijkswaterstaat
• SAFER – Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre at Chalmers University of Technology
• SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research
• TECER – Technical Center of Estonian Roads Ltd
• TNO – Nederlandse Organisatie voor toegepast-natuurwetenschappelijk onderzoek
• TRL – the Transport Research Laboratory
• Graz University of Technology
• University of Florence
• Volvo Group Trucks Technology
The analysis of all filled-in questionnaires revealed that many partners actually made use of the possibility to focus on the topics where they saw their main fields of expertise. The main results of this analysis are summarised in Fig. 5. The values in the table indicate the score of each aggregated topic in percent of the best possible score, which would be reached, if all participants assigned a “very high effect” to a particular topic against the respective criterion. The bar diagrams visualise the weighted total scores with the red square showing the mean value and the light section of the respective bar indicating the variation about the mean.
The moderate differences between the scores of the aggregated topics within each research area indicate as an important outcome that none of them is clearly irrelevant. Therefore, the decision was taken to include all the eleven aggregated topics in the final PROS roadmap, but to reflect their relative priorities in the timing of topics in this roadmap.
Following a similar format as applied by ERTRAC in its existing research roadmaps, the final PROS roadmap does not only provide information on suggested starting points and on the expected duration of work on individual road safety research topics. Following the process description above, it also provides information on important milestones for each aggregated topic and distinguishes four different kinds of activity under each topic. These activities are indicated by coloured arrows in the final PROS roadmap, which is shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7. Complemented by the descriptions of the aggregated research topics in the annex, this roadmap represents a key result of the PROS project.
The year in which the respective research is scheduled to start according to Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 refers to the work programme in Horizon 2020 in which PROS recommends including the corresponding research topic. This allocation of topics is based on the assumption, that the main road safety research needs covered by the Transport Work Programme 2014 will finally be addressed by funded projects. Otherwise, the topic “vehicle technology for two-wheeler safety” as well as the two topics from the research area “Traffic safety analysis & assessment” would become candidates for inclusion in the Work Programme 2016/2017, as indicated by the light sections of the corresponding arrows.
Apart from that, an important conclusion from the roadmap is the recommendation to include the following six research topics in the upcoming work programmes:
• Behaviour in traffic – Making us safer road users
• Technological leadership in safe future vehicles – Improving protection in crashes
• Safe roads design – Making them self-explaining and forgiving to the benefit of all road users
• Improving protection in crashes – Counteracting our fragility
• Technological leadership in safe future vehicles – From assisted to automated driving
• Innovation in ITS infrastructure for road safety – Making use of the connected world
The first three topics are recommended as elements of road safety, behavioural and infrastructure-related research for 2016, the last three – two of them ITS-related – for 2017.
Continuation of Activities
The PROS project has been the first initiative in which a process for the definition of research priorities with this degree of transparency has been established in a European multi-stakeholder network covering road safety research as a whole. To continue this work beyond the duration of the PROS project, different options were investigated. The continuation mechanism sought for should:
• build on the basic principles of the PROS approach:
o covering the research area as a whole
o maximising involvement
o focusing on priorities
o creating transparency
o remote interaction between experts
• handle relations with all relevant stakeholders related to road users, vehicles and infrastructure
• provide an organisational and decision structure
• continue the core activities:
o keeping the roadmap updated
o promoting research activities
o maintaining a continuous link between all interested stakeholders
• provide solutions to raise funding to cover the related expenses
Possible alternatives which were analysed to continue the process at the end of the PROS project are summarised in Table 1.
ERTRAC was approached and initial meetings were held from July 2013 onwards with responsible persons within ERTRAC and the FOSTER-Road project which is supporting the ERTRAC activities as a coordination action. An agreement was finally reached in April 2014 between ERTRAC and PROS representatives to work towards the continuation of the PROS activities under the umbrella of a re-established ERTRAC Working Group Road Transport Safety & Security. Accordingly, the ERTRAC working group should build on PROS results and be open to all PROS partners. Several PROS partners have also expressed their willingness to take on significant roles in this working group.
The first two meetings of the re-established ERTRAC safety working group were held in June and November 2014 with the vast majority of participants representing PROS partners. While a good basis for cooperation was established and core elements of PROS priorities implemented in ERTRAC recommendations, a continued dialogue with the ERTRAC management and its safety working group is recommended with the aim to integrate the basic principles of PROS mentioned above optimally within the ERTRAC approach.
Potential Impact:
The dissemination strategy of the PROS project focused on organisations identified as important stakeholders in European road safety, such as the automotive industry, regulatory bodies, authorities, the scientific community, technology platforms and road users in general. Accordingly, the dissemination activities of the project were aimed at spreading the results and recommendations acquired during the project to this audience and in particular to the stakeholders who could contribute to the main objective of the project: the creation of a pan-European network capable of setting commonly agreed priorities in European road safety research. To reach this goal, the following dissemination tools were realised in order to ensure good coverage of the available communication media:
• Internet website, including a storage space for deliverables from the project
• "PROS project group" at the professional network LinkedIn, easily accessible from the homepage of the project
• Newsletters providing up-to-date information about the activities performed, presenting current achievements and announcing relevant events
• Leaflets explaining the background, objectives and approach of PROS (first leaflet) and introducing the final list of road safety research priorities (second leaflet)
• Posters giving an overview on the concept of the project, the methodology applied and the main results at various public events and conferences.
Moreover, presentations on the PROS project were held at various conferences and stakeholder meetings, as listed in the following:
- 2nd meeting of the iMobility Forum VRU Working Group, Brussels, 27 September 2012
- CLEPA GrIP Meeting, Brussels, 6 November 2012
- ERTRAC 10 Years Anniversary Conference, Brussels, 6 March 2013
- iMobility Forum Recommendations Workshop, Brussels, 19 March 2013
- 3rd iMobility Forum Plenary Meeting, Brussels, 16 April 2013
- 4th Meeting of the iMobility Forum VRU WG, Brussels, 18 April 2013
- ESV Conference, Seoul, 27 May 2013
- DECOMOBIL Workshop “Roadmap of ICT Design for Clean and Efficient Multimodal Mobility”, Munich, 28 May 2013
- 21st EARPA Task Force Safety Meeting, Brussels, 11 June 2013
- EXCROSS Symposium, Torino, 18 October 2013
- FOSTER-ROAD Consortium Meeting, Brussels, 29 January 2014
- VDA Technical Congress, Hannover, 20 March 2014
- 23rd EARPA Task Force Safety Meeting, Brussels, 31 March 2014
- TRA Conference, Paris, 16 April 2014
- iMobility Forum Working Group R&I Meeting, Brussels, 15 May 2014
- GMTTB Conference, Constance, 3 June 2014
- FISITA World Automotive Congress, Maastricht, 5 June 2014
- ITS European Congress, Helsinki, 17 June 2014
- CLEPA R&I Working Group Meeting, Berlin, 25 June 2014
- Meeting of the ERTRAC Working Group “Road Transport Safety & Security”, Brussels, 27 June 2014
- EUCAR Programme Board Meeting “Safe and Integrated Mobility”, Brussels, 1 October 2014
- 8th Meeting of the iMobility Forum VRU Working Group, Brussels, 18 November 2014
- Meeting of the ERTRAC Working Group “Road Transport Safety & Security”, Brussels, 21 November 2014
At the FISITA World Automotive Congress and the ITS European Congress special sessions were organised by PROS partners, which offered additional room not only for the dissemination of project results, but also for the exchange with other stakeholders.
These dissemination tools and activities were complemented by a press release summarising the project results which were considered most interesting to the general public.
Dissemination activities are still continuing beyond the official running time of the project, in order to ensure the uptake of results by important stakeholders. In this context, ERTRAC has been of particular importance, since its Working Group Road Transport Safety & Security was identified as the most suitable structure to continue the activities of PROS beyond the duration of the project. With an overwhelming participation of PROS partners in the first two meetings of this ERTRAC Working Group since its reactivation in summer 2014, this mechanism for the continuation of activities is making good progress. Actually, PROS results have already been fed effectively into these meetings and are well reflected in the Working Group’s outputs in December 2014. This will continue with the project coordinator and other key PROS partners playing active roles within this ERTRAC Working Group and making sure that basic principles from the PROS process area are adopted there.
As another important exploitable result, the process for the definition of research priorities which was developed in PROS on the basis of the aforementioned principles is applicable not only to road safety research and therefore expected to have an impact on the definition of priorities in other research areas, too. At the same time, the information base for the development of road safety research priorities from PROS will be a valuable tool mainly for other initiatives on research programming in this particular field of research.
In addition to addressing relevant stakeholder associations, PROS has also been disseminating its results directly to the European Commission’s directorates general, in particular DG RTD and DG MOVE. Project partners call on the Commission to take these results into account when defining the contents of future Transport Work Programmes in Horizon 2020, as they reflect the views of a very broad range of stakeholders in road safety research and have been developed in a process of utmost transparency. PROS can then effectively help to optimise the use of public funding for performing relevant road safety research in collaborative projects by selecting the right thematic priorities. This will finally contribute to maximise the return on investment in road safety research, both in terms of reduced human suffering and in terms of reduced economic loss from road accidents.
List of Websites:
Public website:
www.pros-project.eu
Contact details:
Dr.-Ing. Peter Urban
Forschungsgesellschaft Kraftfahrwesen mbH Aachen
Steinbachstraße 7 – 52074 Aachen – Germany
Phone: +49 241 80 27015
Fax: +49 241 8861 110
E-mail: urban@fka.de
