Category: Events

LEVITATE Final Conference

Events

After 3 years of intensive work, the LEVITATE partners are looking forward to sharing the results achieved and the tools developed to assess the potential societal impacts of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) on the mobility system and wider livability goals, including safety, the environment, the economy and society.

The LEVITATE impact assessment framework has been turned into a user-friendly and interactive online tool, called the policy support tool (PST). PST allows users, particularly local authorities, to forecast the potential impacts of increasing levels of vehicle automation and penetration, as well as to calculate the effects of implementing policy interventions such as road pricing, the removal of on-street parking or implementing an automated vehicle dedicated lane.

Participants will learn about many areas of the project, such as:

  • which impact areas have been selected and why
  • the assumptions behind the expected impacts
  • the range of methods for gathering input about the expected impacts
  • the definition of policy interventions to steer the deployment of automated vehicles
  • the expected automated vehicle use cases
  • the policy implications of CAVs

There will also be a demonstration of the PST and an opportunity for participants to try out the tool.

Practical information
The final event allows both onsite and remote participation. Attendance in person will be easier for those wishing to try out the PST as partners will be on hand to guide them. The event will follow the latest COVID-19 guidelines of the Belgian and Brussels authorities.

What: LEVITATE Final Conference
When: May 25, 2022 | 10:00 until 16:00 (CET)
Where: Scotland House Conference Centre, located at Rond-Point Schuman 6, 1040 Brussels.

Registration open
We invite you to register here »
In case you cannot attend the final conference in person, we invite you to join the event online by indicating this in your registration form.

PRELIMINARY AGENDA

9.30: Registration and welcome coffee/tea

OPENING

10:00 – Welcome by Pete Thomas/Andrew Morris, Loughborough University, project coordinator and CINEA (tbc)

10:10 – Brief introduction to LEVITATE, Pete Thomas, Loughborough University

BUILDING BLOCKS

10:20 – The building blocks of the LEVITATE impact assessment framework

  • Determining the impacts of most relevance to cities, Rune Elvik TOI
  • Developing backcasting: starting from desired visions, Martin Zach, AIT
  • Defining the use cases and policy interventions, Bin Hu, AIT
  • Predicting the impact of CAVs on road safety, Wendy Weijermars, SWOV
  • Conducting a cost-benefit analysis, Knut Hartveit, TOI

11:10 – Refreshments

KEY RESULTS

11:40 – The short, medium and long-term impacts of CAVs, including the expected impacts of policy interventions

  • Urban freight, Bin Hu, AIT
  • Urban transport, Julia Roussou, NTUA
  • Passenger cars, Amna Chaudry, Loughborough university

12:10 – Selected case studies

  • Selected case studies
  • Automated Ride Sharing, Loughborough University
  • The interaction of CAV deployment and road use pricing in Vienna, AIT

POLICY PERSPECTIVE

12:30 – The role of LEVITATE in understanding the policy implications of CAVs

  • Introduction, Amna Chaudhry, Loughborough University
  • The Vienna perspective, Helmut Augustin, city of Vienna
  • The Manchester perspective, Liam Potts, Transport for Greater Manchester

13:00 – Lunch

LEVITATE POLICY SUPPORT TOOL

14:00 – Introduction and demonstration, Apostolos Ziakopoulos, NTUA

14:20 – Hands-on trial of the PST CAV impacts prediction module, facilitated by LEVITATE partners

CLOSING SESSION

15:45 – What’s next for LEVITATE?

15:55 – Closing words

16:00 – Close of Conference

 

Download the Conference Program »

LEVITATE webinar: Building a dialogue with the LEVITATE cities

Events

From a cities’ perspective the advent of CCAM is not a strategic goal in itself. Rather, CCAM may be welcome if it is able to contribute to the city’s sustainability and liveability goals. There are impact areas where an increasing market penetration of automated vehicles may enter into conflict with the strategic goals of a city, particularly in the absence of regulation. How to define feasible paths of interventions, starting from a set of quantified goals, is addressed in the backcasting methodology of LEVITATE.

This webinar will enable you to learn about the principles of backcasting, how a dialogue with city authorities led to valuable qualitative inputs for our research, and how the final results of our impact assessment relate to the backcasting approach. As an example, the results for the city of Vienna will be discussed, including a detailed case study based on the backcasting city dialogue.

  • Brief introduction to LEVITATE | Andrew Morris, Loughborough University
  • An overview of the backcasting approach and its application to the city of Vienna | Martin Zach, AIT
  • Combining methods and models to obtain quantitative results for impacts | Martin Zach, AIT
  • A user-friendly tool for forecasting impacts and backcasting – the LEVITATE Policy Support Tool | Apostolos Ziakopoulos, NTUA
  • Next steps for the Vienna investigation | Gerald Richter and Johannes Müller, AIT

Registration
LEVITATE webinar: Building a dialogue with the LEVITATE cities – the case of Vienna
Date & time: 7 April 2022 – 14.00-15.30 CET
Registration >>

LEVITATE webinar: Case studies for automated freight transport

Events

This webinar showcases the impacts of cooperative, connected, and automated mobility (CCAM) on two case studies for freight transport: Automated delivery & automated consolidation and Platooning on highway bridges, presented by the Austrian institute of Technology (AIT).

First, we consider the future urban delivery system for parcels via a robo-van concept. Automated delivery vans act as mobile hubs and carry small autonomous delivery robots that swarm out to perform the delivery to the households for the last 200m. In this concept, a further consolidation step through city-hubs can help to reduce the urban freight mileage. In a case study, we showcase the assessment approach and the transferability of the methodology to multiple cities.

The second case study is on platooning on highway bridges. As automation in freight transport increases, we look at the vertical and horizontal traffic load effects on bridges caused by truck platooning. Especially old bridges were built when platoons did not exist. Soon, when platooning can increase the traffic density heavily, structural weakness may cause severe damage to these bridges and the consequences would be disastrous. In this case study, we assess the costs and effects of possible measures for bridges, namely structural strengthening, and access control.

The webinar will include a presentation given by ALICE (Alliance for Logistics Innovation through Collaboration in Europe) to provide an overview of the main trends and challenges for freight and logistics and how CCAM solutions fit in the broader context; which are the expectations, and which are the key EU CCAM for freight initiatives. ALICE will also share its views on the future of automated delivery and platooning on highway bridges.

Join us online to get informed on the future of automated freight delivery and its impacts on mobility and our daily lives!

Registration
Date & time: 31 January 2022 – 10:00-11:30
Registration >>

WE-TRANSFORM First Stakeholder Workshop

Events

The EU-funded WE-TRANSFORM project aims to address both gaps by leveraging stakeholders’ knowledge and experiences to co-create an action-oriented agenda, targeting EU and non-EU administrations, and to prepare well the automation transition and transformation of the workforce in the transport sector. This workshop will launch this process as the first Stakeholder Forum event to involve the community in the project activities, to inform about its objectives and how to become actively engaged in the long run.

The purpose of this workshop is to collect additional input on the State-of-the-Art (i.e. reports, scientific articles, etc.) from similar activities related to impacts of automation and digitalisation for all modes of transport (both passenger and freight), but also other automation-driven sectors, to find out their best practices and understand if they are transferable to WE-TRANSFORM focus.
We wish to gather in this dialogue all actors and interested stakeholders including research, industrial and social partners, relevant networks and associations, employers’ and workers’ representatives, across all transport modes and countries.

Mark your calendar and join the discussion! More detailed information on the agenda and registration (participation is free of charge) will be circulated shortly. Stay tuned and follow us for all updates.

Contact: Julie Castermans, ERTICO – ITS Europe, j.castermans@mail.ertico.com

LEVITATE participates in 3rd annual meeting of Robomobile Life

Events, News

The 3rd annual meeting of the Robomobile Life initiative will take place on 19 and 20 May to explore the role that local authorities (cities, regions) can play in steering the emergence and evolution of automated mobility. LEVITATE will contribute to this workshop along with the Polis secretariat.

Initiated by the French Ministry for Ecological Transition in 2017, the “robomobile life” series of  foresight workshops aims to foster thinking, exploration, questioning, reflection and debate on all subjects and matters related to robomobility. The workshops seek to create a better understanding of the key issues and long-term choices that decision-makers from both the public and private sectors may have to deal with in the coming years and decades, here in France and abroad.

The decade 2021-2030 could see the deployment of the first transport services provided by automated vehicles. This implementation will be gradual, targeted and regulated and should be driven by genuine use cases that meet mobility needs that are poorly or insufficiently covered by the existing offer. These first stages of putting transport automation into service in real conditions will be decisive.

  • To what extent can a city choose the robomobile model that suits it best?
  • What influence will local/regional government stakeholders have on the different socio-technical models associated with automation?
  • What will be the the rules of the game and who will set them?

This third annual meeting aims to provide reflection on these questions. This event has been designed to give participants the possibility to compose their own tailor-made programme. The sessions are independent of each other. An English-speaking track is open to all international attendants and all plenaries will be translated from French to English.

Registration

For further information and to register »

LEVITATE webinar: Road safety assessment of automated vehicles

Events

Connected and automated transport systems (CATS) are expected to be introduced in increasing numbers over the next decades. Moreover, they are expected to have considerable impacts on mobility, safety, the environment and society as a whole. The Horizon 2020 project LEVITATE aims to forecast these impacts.

One of the impacts of CATS that is considered in LEVITATE is road safety, which is high on the agenda when it comes to mobility planning and management. First of all, it is identified in which ways road safety is affected by increasing penetration levels of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) and policy interventions related to CATS. Second, it is discussed what is known from the literature concerning road safety impacts of CATS and finally, road safety impacts are quantified as far as possible by combining various approaches.

During this webinar between 14:00-15:30 CEST, 27 May, we would like to discuss with you which road safety impacts can be expected from CATS and how the different types of impacts are quantified within LEVITATE. Several partners will present their findings including Loughborough University, SWOV – Institute for Road Safety Research and the Austrian Institute of Technology.

Programme

  1. Welcome and introduction – Andrew Morris & Wendy Weijermars
  2. Road safety impacts of CATS that can be expected  – Rins de Zwart
  3. Questions and feedback – Moderator, Wendy Weijermars
  4. Quantification of impacts within Levitate:
    1. Approach: Rins de Zwart
    2. Estimation of impacts using microsimulation – Amna Chaudhry
    3. Estimation of impacts on Vulnerable Road Users – Andreas Hula
  5. Closing remarks – Wendy Weijermars
  6. Questions and feedback concerning the quantification and closing remarks – Moderator, Wendy Weijermars

Registration

Could the introduction of Automated Vehicles (CAVs) be one of the solutions to increase road safety?
Join us to find the answers!
Register here »

3rd European Conference on Connected and Automated Driving – EUCAD 2021

Events

EUCAD 2021 will be a high-level and evidence-based conference where policy challenges meet innovative solutions to deliver on societal benefits. The event is the only conference in Europe that brings together political leaders from the European Commission and Member States with high-level representatives of industry, knowledge institutes and road authorities to exchange knowledge and experience on the most recent technological developments and policies in the area of cooperative, connected and automated mobility (CCAM).

The conference, taking place on 20-22 April 2021, consists of a series of plenary sessions complemented by several thematic breakout discussions as well as a virtual exhibition available throughout the event. The first two days of the programme are primarily policy-oriented while the third day is fully dedicated to break-out sessions discussing specific R&I challenges. All break-out sessions feature interactive panel discussions on specific R&I questions, combined with active audience participation. The virtual exhibition features R&I projects active in the field of automated mobility, including their presentation, documentation and contact information. The exhibition could also feature virtual demonstrations by some large-scale pilot projects.

Programma & registration
The programme for the conference is now published. Registration (free of charge) shall open shortly!

ARCADE: workshop on data sharing for automated driving

Events

ARCADE is a project whose mission is to network with all the vehicle automation projects. LEVITATE has already established a dialogue with ARCADE partners about impact assessment methodologies.

On February 25th, ARCADE organises an online workshop on the topic of data sharing in the CCAM area. ARCADE is a H2020 Coordination and Support Action. Data sharing is one of its topics. In the CAD knowledge base, ARCADE collected material for data sharing.

For cost-effective evaluation of CCAM and for comparability of automated driving research studies, data sharing is essential. If not, costly parallel work on data collection remains common practice. For training of AI, large data sets are needed as well. Many hurdles for data sharing exist, starting from data sensitivity, security, data formats and descriptions, to privacy (GDPR). Today’s working-from-home practice has quickly enabled some remote access facilities.

In this workshop, we will identify bottlenecks and promising approaches for data sharing. The morning session is a broader webinar presenting today’s status, experiences and challenges. The afternoon expert workshop features three break-out sessions where we work on defining boundary conditions and next steps following promising approaches. It is possible to register for morning or afternoon only.

The break-out sessions are:

  1. Principles for industry data sharing
    What principles can we agree upon for enabling data sharing in industrial and research projects? Under what conditions is sharing possible? After an introduction of an international multi-partner project, we will work on promising approaches.
  2. In-vehicle data selection and analysis
    Data is generated in vehicles for research and development. This could lead to difficulties in managing large amounts of data, governing and protecting IP rights, and privacy issues. What if the data could be processed in-vehicle and only a reduced dataset is sent back-office, after data is pseudonized and reduced in size? This workshop will discuss how can we reach this state and what are the steps needed.
  3. GDPR in practice
    What practical privacy challenges do researchers and developers face in order to collaborate and share personal data? We will discuss examples of the type of problems which may be encountered, examining how (and if) they may be overcome.

You can register here »

FABULOS Final Conference

Events

The FABULOS consortium warmly invites cities, public transport authorities and operators, road authorities, mobility and robotics specialists from around the world to join the online Final Conference on 18 February.

They would like to share their results and lessons with you. Via a pre-commercial procurement, six cities worked together with three commercial consortia to bring automated shared mobility in Europe a big step further. As a result of this R&D project, a proof-of-concept for the management of autonomous fleets as part of the public transportation is now available. Therefore, the FABULOS Final conference offers a unique opportunity to hear about the state of the art in autonomous shared mobility.

During the Final Conference we will dive deeper into the three different prototype solutions from our Norwegian, Estonian and Finnish consortia.  The experiences from the FABULOS cities will also play a prime role. Other key themes are driverless shuttles as part of public transport, innovation procurement, regulatory aspects and technical lessons learned on turnkey robot bus solutions, including the remote operations of such a fleet.

Final programme & registration »

 

 

 

Webinar: Impact assessment of automated vehicles

Events

There is growing consensus that public authorities have an important role to play to ensure vehicle automation delivers positive mobility outcomes and averts negative effects. To help them make the right policy choices requires an understanding of the potential impacts of automated vehicles and of the most suitable policy options.

Details & registration
The LEVITATE and CoEXist projects are developing knowledge and tools to help cities prepare for and steer the introduction of automated vehicles. The webinar will specifically provide insights into the methods developed for assessing the impacts of automated vehicles across a range of mobility domains and the findings from their application in real-life scenarios and using policy options such as parking regulation, road pricing and dedicated AV lanes.

The webinar is a Polis initiative in cooperation with the LEVITATE and CoEXist projects. It will be moderated by Suzanne Hoadley. Featured speaker will be: Dr. Hitesh Boghani, Senior Research Associate at Transport Safety Research Centre (representing LEVITATE). More information on other speakers will be provided soon.

Title:  Mobilising Mobility: Impact assessment of automated vehicles
Date: 15 October 2020, 16h00 – 17h00 CEST

Register now »

About CoEXist
CoEXist is a European project which prepares the transition phase during which automated and conventional vehicles will co-exist on cities’ roads. It bridges the gap between automated vehicles (AVs) technology, transportation and infrastructure planning, by strengthening the capacities of urban road authorities and cities to plan for the effective deployment of AVs.