Last week the final conference of LEVITATE took place in Brussels. The hybrid closing conference was an opportunity for the LEVITATE project partners to share the results achieved and the tools developed with the general public. LEVITATE is a European project aimed at predicting the effects of developments in the field of 'Connected, cooperative and automated mobility' (CCAM). Within the project, a policy tool has been developed to support policy makers in decisions about CCAM.
The day was opened by Georgios Sarros, a project manager at CINEA, who placed LEVITATE in the broader picture of CCAM developments within the European Union. The consortium then presented the building blocks of the LEVITATE methodology, including the selection of effects and policy interventions, the determination of road safety effects and the cost-benefit analysis. Then the main results were discussed: the short, medium and long term effects of policy interventions in the field of urban freight traffic, urban transport and passenger cars. Finally, there was a hands-on demonstration of the Policy Support Tool. The conference concluded with presentations on the policy implications of CCAM.
SWOV was involved in, among other things, determining the road safety effects of developments and policy interventions in the field of CCAM. First, it was analyzed in which ways road safety is influenced and then an attempt was made to quantify the effects as much as possible, among other things using the microsimulation model AIMSUN Next. In addition, SWOV conducted a driving simulator study that examined how drivers adapt their driving behavior when they are surrounded by automated driving vehicles. SWOV also played an important role in the dissemination of the research results and SWOV was responsible for developing the communication resources, including the website, newsletters and project videos.
SWOV was also involved in the development of the conceptual model in which the different effects of CCAM were mapped. Wendy Weijermars "Developments in the field of CCAM have effects in many different areas, for example on road safety, the environment and travel behaviour. There are also all kinds of connections between the effects, such as how travel behavior influences road safety, for example. It was therefore an enormous It was a challenge to map out all the effects and then try to predict them as accurately as possible.Precisely because of the relationships between the various effects, it was very instructive to be involved as SWOV in this multidisciplinary project and to collaborate with scientists from other countries. disciplines and other countries."
LEVITATE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824361.
