Five European regions: Abruzzo (IT), West Midlands (UK), South-East Romania (RO), Central Macedonia (GR) and Prague (CZE), which are involved in the project, have worked together as part of the INNOTRANS project to increase innovation capacity in transport.
These regions identified and shortlisted nearly three tens of best practices in Transport Innovation. All the practices can be considered as ways to enhance the innovation capacity of the transport ecosystem.
According to the selected innovative practices, the hottest transportation areas are: Connected and Autonomous vehicles, Intelligent Systems of Traffic management, Smart Parking and Logistics.
Example of an innovative practice is Midlands Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Cluster (MCAV) which focuses on fostering innovation and cooperation in CAV technology. This cluster crosses Industry classifications, working within digital and Advanced Manufacturing Industries.
“Future transport innovation is very complex and requires a wider understanding of more technologies than a single organization can manage. Even if the regions focus on different problems in transportation, they can learn from each other,” says Tessa Lukehurst, the lead manager of the INNOTRANS project.
Another example of shared practice is Mobithess, Thessaloniki’s urban mobility service that comprises a website developed jointly by a partnership of local actors for the provision of traffic information. Mobithess promotes sustainable mobility awareness.
Two types of good practices (GP) were identified within the project. Most of the shared GPs belongs to the category Innovative Technology. Innovative technology is the outcome of an innovation process usually applied by businesses and academia either individually or in collaboration with each other. It is a product, technology system, management procedure or business model that fulfils the criteria of innovation term.
Second category of shared GPs is Innovation mechanism that facilitate the production of transport innovation. It is not a transport innovation by itself, rather it is an innovative solution for the facilitation of innovation generation in general, and possibly in the transport sector in particular.
Based on shared best practices, INNOTRANS project published Good Practice Handbook which contains the most inspiring innovative practices in Transport. In this publication all the partners selected GPs with the highest potential impact out of GPs of others partners and described how these examples of transport innovation inspired them. The brochure can be downloaded here.
