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EvoRoads is up and running: what happened so far?

EvoRoads and the Safe System Approach

Launched in May 2024, the EC-funded project EvoRoads is already working at full speed to deliver its innovative approach to safety assessment frameworks. In the past months, substantial work has been carried out to investigate state-of-the-art of existing frameworks with the goal of facilitating the implementation of the Safe System Approach to road safety. EvoRoads aims to accelerate the attainment of the ambitious EU Vision Zero goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries on European roads by 2050.

EvoRoads is informed by the Safe System approach, according to which death and serious injury in road collisions are not an inevitable price for mobility and are actually largely preventable. This approach recognizes human error and vulnerability as inevitable and not to be blamed and aims to ensure that all actors involved in road safety take responsibility to build a forgiving, self-explaining, redundant system which will prevent humans being exposed to unbearable forces in crashes.  You can read more about EvoRoads and the Safe System approach in our blog entry by  Coen Bresser, Project coordinator and Senior I&D manager at ERTICO in his contribution Safety is the baseline.

EvoRoads Best practices and baseline catalogue of safety criteria

EvoRoads first tangible output is the report Best practices and baseline catalogue of safety criteria which establishes a comprehensive baseline of road safety indicators compiled by reviewing legislative frameworks, safety practices, and the adoption of emerging technologies across multiple European nations, focusing particularly on the four projects’ pilots: Italy, Spain, Latvia, and Romania. Quantitatively it introduces a structured matrix of 124 road safety indicators, categorized by their relevance to ten categories of transport dimensions such as infrastructure, user behaviour, and emerging technologies. This report is one of the deliverables associated with EvoRoads Work Package (WP) 1: Evolutionary safety assessment framework and solutions enablers.

For WP Leader Frontier Innovations, this report is a significant milestone: 

The project has made significant progress by assembling a comprehensive knowledge base of existing safety assessment frameworks and KPI quantification methodologies, identifying synergies, gaps, and approaches to accident analysis

According to Links Foundation, the report lead editor, such a task came with its difficulties:

Assigning uniquely safety metrics to EvoRoads proposed categories was particularly challenging due to overlaps and unclear definitions, a condition that reflects the complexities of road safety analysis.

The report will be of relevance, among others to road safety authorities, researchers, city planners, and sensor manufacturers. Furthermore, a specific subsection of the report is dedicated to CCAM operations, providing stakeholders with a structured set of metrics to support the selection, evaluation, and refinement of CCAM-related strategies.

EvoRoads ongoing and upcoming tasks

The work carried out to produce this report is connected to several ongoing and upcoming activities: preparation activities for developing models to extract, estimate, and augment safety criteria and KPIs are underway. Co-creation workshops with stakeholders across six regions in four countries are being planned to capture requirements, validate platform effectiveness, and generate guidelines for long-term adoption. Initial steps towards developing the Safe Mobility Data Space (SMDS) have been completed, focusing on creating a unified EU-wide data platform. Its ambition is to integrate and harmonize diverse data types supporting advanced safety analysis and decision-making for road safety enhancement.

The co-creation workshops will allow EvoRoads to engage end-users, identify their challenges, and determine the business value they can extract from the platform. Similarly, scenarios will be developed to guide validation on pilot sites, ensuring alignment with real-world applications and tangible business value. In the meantime, user interfaces will be designed to address end-user needs while work will concentrate on finalizing the platform’s conceptual architecture, consolidating all technological propositions into a cohesive structure that ensures seamless integration and optimal functionality. As a representative for Frontier Innovations concluded:

As the platform evolves, we are optimistic about its potential to transform road safety monitoring and management, ultimately contributing to safer mobility for all EU citizens. We envisage and hope these opportunities to have a lasting, positive impact on European communities!”

Angelina Despotopoulou, Senior Software Engineer and project manager, Frontier Innovations

The EvoRoads Team