Innovative Solutions in Future Stations, Energy Metering and Power Supply (IN2STEMPO) addresses the call S2R-CFM-IP3-01-2017 Smart System Energy Management Solutions and Future Station Solutions. IN2STEMPO aligns with the Shift2Rail objectives and aims to reduce lifecycle costs, improve reliability and punctuality, whilst increasing capacity, enhancing interoperability and improving the customer experience. The IN2STEMPO Smart Power Supply activities seek to contribute to the development of a railway smart grid based on the development of an unique railway power grid in an interconnected system. This new railway network will integrate smart metering, innovative power electronic components, energy management and energy storage systems. This new concept will lead to improved and optimised train traffic, energy costs, and energy supply security for the railway system. In parallel it will allow for optimised solutions to be developed through optimising investment, operation costs and maintenance. The IN2STEMPO Smart Metering research activities will realise a non-intrusive smart metering sensor network at a railway system level. It will demonstrate an open system and interface for data collection, aggregation and analysis at an open source ODM (Operational Data Management) level. The applications will exploit the energy analysis process with the aim of enhancing energy decision-making and line operation patterns. Other possible applications include preventative maintenance plans, asset management and Life Cycle Cost dashboards. The IN2STEMPO Future Stations activities are aimed at improving the customer experience and safety at stations, resulting in a better passenger experience for customers using the railway. Research will be focussed on improving crowd management in high capacity stations, station design and components, accessibility to trains and new ticketing technologies.

5G solutions for verticals is a well-defined European objective. This requires developing 5G infrastructures to address a wide range of applications adopting flexible architectures, offering converged services across heterogeneous technology domains with unified software control. However, vertical industries today can only verify use cases in small scales in commercial environments, before investing in large scale deployments. Through ICT-17 projects 5G infrastructures become available to verticals to test their applications, however large-scale trials are still not possible. 5G-VICTORI will conduct large scale trials for advanced vertical use case verification focusing on Transportation, Energy, Media and Factories of the Future and cross-vertical use cases. It leverages 5G network technologies developed in 5G-PPP Phase-1 and Phase-2 projects 5G-XHaul and 5G-PICTURE and exploits extensively existing facilities interconnecting main sites of all ICT-17 infrastructures i.e. 5G-VINNI, 5GENESIS and 5G-EVE and the 5G UK test-bed in a Pan-European Infrastructure. The project will provide enhancements of existing infrastructures towards integration of a large variety of vertical and cross-vertical use cases. 5G-VICTORI’s platform aims to transform current closed, purposely developed and dedicated infrastructures into open environments where resources and functions are exposed to ICT and vertical industries through common vertical and non-vertical specific repositories. These functions can be accessed shared on demand and deployed to compose very diverse set of services in a large variety of ecosystems. 5G-VICTORI’s uniquely strong consortium brings together major players form ICT including operators, equipment vendors academic and research organisation and SMEs as well as main players from vertical industries including nationwide rail and electricity operators, rail technology vendors, media content delivery players and a number of SMEs focusing on advanced vertical services.

DIGNITY will delve into the digital transport eco-system to grasp the full range of factors that might lead to disparities in the uptake of digitalised mobility solutions by different user groups in Europe. Analysing the digital transition from both a user and provider’s perspective, DIGNITY will present the challenges brought about by digitalisation, and design, test and validate the DIGNITY approach, a novel concept that seeks to become the ‘ABCs for a digital inclusive travel system’. The project will build the approach step by step and provide a methodology to frame the digital gap in metropolitan/regional contexts, considering all elements of the digital transport ecosystem: the institutional framework (macro level), the provision of digital mobility (meso level) and the needs of end users (micro level). It will then combine proven inclusive design methodologies with the principles of foresight analysis to examine how a structured involvement of all actors - local institutions, market players, interest groups and end users - can help bridge the digital gap by co-creating more inclusive mobility solutions and by formulating user-centred policy frameworks. DIGNITY will demonstrate the approach in 4 pilots: Barcelona (ES), Tilburg (NL), Ancona (IT) and Flanders (B). The evaluation of DIGNITY’s potential and the impacts generated in the pilots will lead to conclusions and policy recommendations for wider uptake. Practical applications for designing inclusive digital transport in the form of the DIGNITY toolkit will help public authorities, transport operators and private providers consider the needs and requirements of all users in their decision-making processes. To fully exploit DIGNITY’s research results and the knowledge acquired to a broad audience, a Learning Community will be created, to raise awareness of the social implications of the digital transition and encourage the adoption of the DIGNITY approach.

The ‘Middle East and North Africa Regional Architecture: mapping geopolitical shifts, regional order and domestic transformations’ -the MENARA Project- will study the geopolitical order in the making in the South and East Mediterranean Countries and the Middle East amid all deep-reaching social and political changes unfolding since 2010. The project aims at describing the main features of the regional geopolitical order, its origins, and evolution; identifying and mapping the decisive domestic, regional and global actors, dynamics and trends; building future scenarios for 2025 and 2040; and informing EU policies and strategies. It will examine whether, where and when conflict and/or cohesion dynamics prevail, the level and depth of regional fragmentation and the effects of regional and domestic processes on global dynamics and vice versa. This will be achieved by analysing ideational and material factors (national, sub and supra-national identities; religion and politics; global identities; demography; energy; economy; military; environment) and by conducting in-depth research on specific case studies on ongoing dynamics at three different levels (domestic, regional and global). All this research will be based on quantitative and qualitative methods -including fact finding missions on the ground, interviews, focus groups, Delphi surveys - and innovative foresight techniques. Research will be accompanied by pioneering dissemination methods willing to increase the project’s impact not only over the specific academic community and policy-making circles but also over broader general public. This will include the translation of research results into accessible deliverables such as audio-visuals, futures notes series, infographics and interactive maps, and a Massive Open Online Course.