Dr. Eleni Anoyrkati, a representative of the RECREATE Project Lead Partner Coventry University Enterprises Ltd, attended and delivered a presentation at the Virtual CSUM2020 – 5th Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility taking place from 17th to 19th June 2020.
The Conference was organised by the University of Thessaly, Department of Civil Engineering, Traffic, Transportation and Logistics Laboratory. Its main aim is the dissemination of knowledge and the exchange of good practices between researchers and practitioners in urban transportation. The first CSUM was organised in 2012 in Volos and, since then, it has taken place every two years with a focus on a different theme. This year’s theme is “Advances in Mobility as a Service Systems” and will cover areas such as infrastructure resilience, smart cities, public transport, transformational technologies, connected and autonomous vehicles and fleets, digitalisation, human factors. The Conference was supposed to take place in Greece this year too, but because of issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is being held online.
The RECREATE Project Lead Partner Coventry University Enterprises Ltd submitted a paper titled “Creating smart(er) cities by accelerating innovation in transport Small and Medium Sized enterprises (SMEs): the case of West Midlands region” (authors Eleni Anoyrkati and Alba Avarello), based on the findings generated within the RECREATE Project about the status of SMEs in the West Midlands Region of England.
SMEs currently employ 55% of the EU workforce in transport and their important role in the value chain is expected to expand. However, the rigid value chain of the transport sector is preventing the introduction of innovation by SMEs into new vehicles and transport-related products. The paper investigates this market failure at regional level and focuses on the opportunities that new markets offer to transport SMEs to improve their capacity to further develop and grow. The results presented on the paper are based on the research conducted within the RECREATE Transport SME Competitiveness report. Dr. Anoyrkati presented the paper today at the CSUM 2020 Conference, showing the key future success factors that can boost transport innovation in the West Midlands. The presentation is available on YouTube.
Coventry University Enterprises Ltd has also submitted a paper titled “Policy directions for enhancing transport innovation infrastructure for smarter regions” (authors Tessa Lukehurst and Eleni Anoyrkati) based on the results generated from the INNOTRANS Project. INNOTRANS aims at identifying transport innovation potential in the participating regions and developing guidelines for policy interventions and Actions Plans. The paper, presented by Ms. Tessa Lukehurst, investigates the competitive advantage of five European Regions and explores the innovation potential as well as the success factors needed in tackling any innovation obstacles, putting forward some policy suggestions to create a funding strategy.
The Conference proceedings will be published in the book series “Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing” by Springer. Selected papers will be revised and extended versions will be considered for publication.
The event is a great opportunity to show the RECREATE Project results to a wider audience and explore future opportunities in transport.
