ERRAC

Quote of the month

Nadia Debachy — 2010-07-28T12:16:00Z

Frédéric Sgarbi (Head of the Sustainable Surface Transport Unit DG Research)

"It is important to analyse the reasons why rail freight cannot catch up and what can be done. ERRAC needs to consolidate a long term vision for 2030. There is a number of "grand challenges" such as decarbonisation, aging etc... All FP research should address one of these challenges. It is important to identify the right package for rail research." ERRAC Plenary Meeting 18/05/2010

Andrew Mc Naughton (ERRAC Chairman from Networkrail)

"19th century approach to 21st century problems does not work ! Solutions of yesterday are not adequate ! We need to approach research with a sense of urgency ! Research must deliver something the market needs and wants !" ERRAC Plenary Meeting 18/05/2010

Klaus Ebeling (Secretary General of EIA)

"Rail is very slow in innovation. In 1922, discussions started about FOC. Now we see it as a topic on the 4th Call in 2010. There are many safety and security questions to be solved for the transport system. I urge the rail sector to also think beyond rail !" ERRAC Plenary Meeting 18/05/2010

Dan Otteborn (ERRAC Vice-Chairman from Bombardier)

"Research without market uptake in our field of applied engineering is a waste of public money as well as of that of companies participating in the research." ERRAC WP06 Workshop 18/03/2010

Luisa Velardi (ERRAC Evaluation Working Group WP06 Leader from Trenitalia)

"Think of Leonardo Da Vinci who designed a bicycle in 1490 which had at the time no market uptake. And centuries later, the bicycle has a huge market uptake !" ERRAC WP06 Workshop 18/03/2010

Mark Robinson (Evaluation Working Group WP06 Co-Leader from Newcastle University)

"A good process of thinking in advance, based on lessons learnt from other projects, can lead to a much better focus to help devise new rail research projects that can guarantee concrete market uptake, offering widely aknowledged improvements and solutions for the future rail industry and market in general." Extract of ERRAC WP06 factsheet

Dennis Schut (ERRAC Project Manager)

"The question is to design a strategy for rail to be again the backbone of the European transport system !" Brussels 19/07/2010

FP7 4th Call Pre-Consortium Building Meetings

Nadia Debachy — 2010-07-28T09:09:38Z

Broadly based on ERRAC advice to the European Commission, the 4th call for Proposals for the FP7 Transport Theme has been recently published by the Commission.

ERRAC organises a number of Pre-Consortium Building meetings for the Rail related Research topics ERRAC priorities in the 4th Call.

The responsible Work package of the ERRAC ROADMAP project will invite all interested partners who have informed ERRAC about their interest to participate in these Pre-Consortium Building meetings. In many cases a number of key players have already drafted some ideas for a future proposal. These ideas will be presented and discussed during these meetings.

Participants to the Pre-Consortium Building meetings are very welcome to contribute to these initial ideas, which will form the basis for the consortium and proposal building (which will not be managed by ERRAC) which shall finally lead to a proposal submission by December 2010.

Here is a planning of some of the next 4th Call Pre-Consortium Building meetings :

29/07/2010 Virtual Homologation Noise topic STT.2011.2.5.1
06/09/2010 Suicides and Trespasses topic STT.2011.4.1.2
10/09/2010 Freight Derailment topic STT.2011.4.1.2
10/09/2010 Efficient Interfaces between Transport Modes SST.2011.2.1-1
17/09/2010 Electromagnetic Compatibility topic SST.2011.2.5.1

In case You or your organisation is interested in one or more of the 4th Call Rail Research topics and would like to be invited or even if you are interested in the ERRAC ROADMAP process, please contact the Secretary of ERRAC or the ERRAC Project Manager (contact details below) and you will receive an update on the current situation.

Giorgio Travaini (UNIFE) Secretary of ERRAC Giorgio.travaini unife.org

Dennis Schut (UIC) ERRAC Project Manager Schut uic.org

Communication from the ERRAC WP06

Nadia Debachy — 2010-07-16T13:51:50Z

The WP06 is evaluating projects and will submit a reporting with the evaluations to the European Commission.

We welcome any suggestions on projects we should evaluate.

We thank you for your contribution.

EWG WP06 team

ERRAC Roadmap WP06 Open Workshop report

Nadia Debachy — 2010-04-29T14:41:24Z

The following article also available on the EC website was written by Peter Gutierrez representing the EC at the ERRAC WP06 Workshop held 18 March 2010 in Brussels. Please find below the link to the EC website page:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/transp...

Weighing up the results of EU-funded rail research

The ERRAC ROADMAP project is working to promote a more systematic and focused approach to the use of rail transport sector resources. In a recent workshop in Brussels, participants discussed lessons learned from past research projects, with a view to enhancing real market uptake of results.

ERRAC Evaluation WG WP06 Workshop 18 March 2010 in Brussels The European Rail Research Advisory Council (ERRAC) is charged with the development of a concrete and detailed strategy for common European research activities in the rail transport sector. To this end, the ERRAC ROADMAP project is producing a step-by-step guide to help reach the goals presented in ERRAC's Strategic Rail Research Agenda (SRRA).

"I believe we all love our jobs," said Luisa Velardi of Trenitalia. "We all love research. But ERRAC is not really about research, it's about results. Our Research is only useful if we see the results being taken up in the market." The ERRAC ROADMAP evaluation process, she explained, is therefore based on market uptake, not on the quality of the work done.

Evaluating innovation

Over the past years, a great number of rail research projects have been funded by the European Commission, representing billions of Euros of investment. Yet the question remains as to how much of this research has actually been useful or relevant. It is clear that otherwise valuable research results are sometimes lost (forgotten) and some work is repetitive or redundant.

"At some point we need to stop and think, evaluate and decide if we are going in the right direction," says Luisa Velardi. "We want to develop rail research projects that can guarantee concrete market uptake, offering real improvements and solutions for the future rail industry."

ERRAC ROADMAP carried out an analysis of finished project results and deliverables, together with interviews of project participants and stakeholders.

Grades were assigned in terms of market uptake, as follows:

• Strong market uptake – clear evidence of use of products, processes, dissemination of knowledge, tools etc., in several countries. Need for additional projects but only in complementary areas

• Medium market uptake – some evidence of use of products and processes, limited dissemination of knowledge, tools etc., in a few countries

Follow-up projects may be necessary and the results might eventually be used more in the future

• Weak market uptake – no known use of products, processes, dissemination of knowledge, tools etc. No follow up project unless the reason for the failure of market uptake is clearly understood

Of the projects evaluated, said Luisa Velardi, 13% showed strong market uptake, 7% were medium, and 24% were judged weak.

"No market uptake means money wasted, public money wasted. But it is also a waste of our intellectual capacity, of time and other resources," she said. "And it is not rewarding on personal and professional levels for individual researchers."

Cases: weak, strong and why

At the workshop in Brussels, Newrail's Mark Robinson had the unenviable task of presenting his 'weak' project, 'CARGOSPEED', an interesting and very innovative research initiative that had little impact in the real world.

‘'On one level, CARGOSPEED was very much a success," said Mark Robinson. "It produced real results, a working system for transferring freight to and from trains and lorries. Unfortunately, the market uptake was in fact very poor."

The CARGOSPEED system is ingenious: a train of wagons with removable floors arrives at a terminal and stops between two raised platforms; a hydraulic 'pop-up' column rises from a pit between the rails, raising and then rotating the wagon floor, allowing a lorry to drive onto it from one side, detach its trailer and then drive off on the other side. The wagon floor is then rotated back into position and the train can depart. The process is reversed for unloading. With multiple wells and pop-up columns serving several wagons on the same train, several lorries can deposit or retrieve trailers at once, greatly reducing the amount of time needed to load and unload freight.

"The reason we have seen no market uptake," says Mark Robinson, "is that we simply didn't have a customer. The system works, lorry drivers say they would use it, freight transporters say they would use it, but the parties who could actually put it into practice, that is to say the terminals, just do not want to undertake the investment."

The lesson learned: make sure you are addressing a real and pressing need in the rail market and make sure you include real users, i.e. 'customers', as part of the project consortium, parties that will use the results.

On the other hand

Counterbalancing the CARGOSPEED story, George Kotsikos, also of Newrail, delivered a positive example. The 'ALJOIN' project, which carried out studies of aluminium use in train wagons, received a 'strong market uptake' rating.

"Aluminium alloys are now in widespread use for rail vehicle construction," explained George Kotsikos. "However, in collisions involving aluminium rail coaches, like the one we saw here in Belgium just recently, it has been observed that some of the longitudinal seam welds have fractured for several metres beyond the zone of severe damage, while the panels themselves are generally left intact without significant distortion."

ALJOIN partners realised that designers needed better data to assess this fracture phenomenon. In addition, there was a real need for innovation in the use of joining techniques and joint design to improve the performance of aluminium vehicles under crash conditions.

"We addressed a specific technical problem," said George Kotsikos. "We had a clearly defined goal, we had a logical array of partners, and the division of tasks among the partners was sensible and coherent."

Some of the fundamental data generated during the ALJOIN project have had far-reaching effects indeed, having leading to new Europe-wide legislation on train wagon design and construction; all new wagons now produced in Europe must incorporate ALJOIN design innovations. The ultimate result, says George Kotsikos, will be greater survivability of severe rail accidents.

In closing…

After the case studies, Chris Brown of the UK Department for Transport delivered a presentation on how to embed market uptake in research projects. This was followed by an open discussion on lessons learned, suggestions and propositions for more successful research projects.

Luisa Velardi said ERRAC ROADMAP partners hope their work will prove valuable to the European Commission when it decides whether or not to support new rail transport projects. "It must be a priority to consider both the potential and likely impacts of publicly funded research," she concluded.

ERRAC WP05 Open Workshop : Strengthening Competitiveness

Nadia Debachy — 2010-04-28T08:00:00Z

European Workshop : Railway competitiveness, costs and priorities for innovation

ERRAC WP05 organised an Open Workshop

“Whole Railway Cost Models and Drivers for Innovation and Competition”

on 22nd April 2010 in Brussels.

The main focus of this workshop was to develop the high level railway cost structures against European railway cost data and from this develop further research needs and further develop the ideas from the first open workshop held in London at the end of last year.

Attached the agenda of the topics discussed in this workshop and the notes from the last workshop held in London, including the charts of the top down breakdown of UK rail costs. In the workshop on 22nd April 2010 the idea was to build up a model of railway costs across Europe and to use this as the basis for a top down approach to determine priorities for innovation.


IMG/doc/agenda_for_errac_wp05_22nd_april_2010.doc


IMG/doc/notes_from_errac_wp5_roadmaps_meeting_london_-091027.doc

it is also the intention to look at a bottom up approach also, by discussing from experience what are the barriers to competition and innovation, eg issues of process in tendering, standards and legislation. All kind of expertise that helped us building up this overall picture of opportunities and barriers to innovation and cost effective improvement to the railway was very welcomed.

For any further details and/or information on this workshop or ERRAC WP05 roadmap/activities, please fell free to contact:

Jonathan Paragreen (Network Rail - Research)

Jonathan.Paragreen networkrail.co.uk

Phone: 0044 (0) 1332262637

Mobile: 0044 (0) 7515625147

ERRAC WP04 Open Workshop

Nadia Debachy — 2010-04-23T11:17:03Z

European Workshop : Railway Safety & Security

ERRAC welcomes you to the WP04 2nd workshop for the ERRAC Roadmap Safety & Security

The workshop will be held at the CER premises Avenue des Arts 53 in Brussels

6 May from 10h00 - 16h00

The results of the workshop will be integrated in the Rail Safety & Security Roadmap; and then, integrated in to the annual Rail Research roadmap to be presented to the European Commission in June.

Its contents will heavily influence the future FP7 Calls for Proposal in Rail safety and Security. The participation of your companies' experts on safety and on security therefore is essential!

For more information, please conatct the WP leader Antonella Semerano:

antonella.semerano mermecgroup.com


IMG/pdf/errac_wp04_roadmap_y1_d.pdf


IMG/pdf/mom_wp04_y1_ws_b.pdf

Open Workshop ERRAC-Roadmaps Evaluation WP06

Liesbeth de Jong — 2010-03-26T11:17:00Z

Table of contents

ERRAC Evaluation Working Group WP06 Workshop was held in Brussels on 18 March 2010 at the Royal Academy.

The overall scope of the WP6 Evaluation Working Group, within the ERRAC ROADMAP Project, is to bring forward and enhance the work done in providing essential information and tools on lessons learnt from the evaluation of past projects, to allow relevant rail related stakeholders and roadmap producers to make better choices and decisions, to achieve a more effective and measureable success of future rail research projects, both in terms of a systemic-oriented use of resources and in terms of concrete outcomes and real market uptake, for the future evolution of the rail industry.

During the past years, a great number of rail research projects have been funded by the European Commission in previous Framework Programmes, and billions of euros have been spent to this end. Yet it has not been easy to gain full awareness of all the relevant research that has been carried out. Valuable research results are often lost and the risk of overlappings and/or of generating redundant rail project initiatives is significant.

A good process of thinking in advance, based on lessons learnt from other projects, can lead to a much better focus that can guarantee concrete market uptake, for the future rail industry and market in general.

Please find below all the presentations which were given at the workshop organised by the Evaluation Working Group of the ERRAC ROADMAP project (WP06) on 18 March 2010 in Brussels at the Royal Academy. It has been a time to gain insight on lessons learnt from project evaluations and share opinions and contributions to the discussion on more efficient use of resources for the way forward.