What is ERCI?
The European Railway Clusters Initiative (ERCI) comprises 15 research and innovation-oriented railway technology clusters, covering 17 countries. ERCI represents more than 1,500 SMEs and aims to promote innovation and the development of new business opportunities as a means to sustainably strengthen competitiveness within the European railway industry.
ERCI promotes cooperation between industry and research, initiates innovation projects, organises B2B meetings and workshops. This also includes promoting visibility and networking at EU level.
ERCI increases the competitiveness of the European railway industry through different actions, including the development of cross fertilization with other sectors (road, urban air mobility, etc.) and technologies (CAV, drones, etc.). ERCI leverages on networking at European level to bring innovation and business opportunities to its partners (especially SMEs), that can learn from HARMONY expertise, innovations and networking opportunities in the field of sustainable and multimodal mobility.
How did HARMONY participate?
The webinar focused on the new generation of integrated transport and spatial planning tools that take into account the changing dynamics of the transport sector. Manos Chaniotakis (UCL, MaaSLab) presented the HARMONY Model Suite, elaborating on the drone-freight and automated vans and buses demonstrations that take place within the project to support the development of realistic simulation components in the model suite. The HARMONY Model Suite is able to take into account new emerging scenarios, such as those related to the COVID19 effects on transport (Christina Geogouli, UCL MaaS Lab). Therefore, the HARMONY Model Suite supports the new generation of urban and transport planners to integrate new mobility services and technologies with the traditional transport system of cities and regions.
The role of SMEs (Vicent Pastor, ENIDE) and their cooperation and networking with local authorities (Annarita Leserri, ENIDE) is key towards this end.
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