Key transport conference in Germany

A key transport conference is being held in Cologne, Germany with sessions on 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th October 2017.  A series of events is planned for the whole week. On Monday 23rd October, the whole day will be for the EC Collaboration Innovation Days final event. On Tuesday 24th October, the day will be taken up by the Infravation Scientific Panel and Project Coordinators meeting. On Wednesday 25th October, the morning will be for the H2020 FOX project final conference. Meanwhile the afternoon of Wednesday 25th October will be for the Infravation Annual Event 2017. The morning of Thursday 26th October will be for the Healroad project demonstration event. And the afternoon of Thursday 26th October will be for the Infravation Steering Group meeting. This series of events is being organised by the Forum of European National Highway Research Laboratories (5160 FEHRL). This body is a registered international association comprising more than 40 national research/technical centres. Associates from non-European countries provide FEHRL with strong links to the considerable research capacity available globally. With a permanent Secretariat based in Brussels, FEHRL is directly governed by the General Directors of the national road research institutes and laboratories.

According to FEHRL, collaboration between transport modes needs to be strengthened in order to create an improved future integrated and functioning transport system for Europe. The FOX project will help achieve this by developing a highly efficient and effective cross-modal R&D environment and culture which meets the demanding requirements of our transport infrastructure.

Based on the already existing co-modal transport research programmes and agendas, the FOX project will identify common needs and innovative techniques in the technical areas of construction, maintenance, inspection, and recycling & reuse of transport infrastructure. This will be reached by the involvement of stakeholders from all the modes using a phased approach, starting with the determination of the state-of-the-art in research and practice, followed by the identification of the most promising practices and ideas. By mapping the common needs, the final aim is to establish a cross-modal Working Group to develop a roadmap for the whole transport sector and set the agenda for the further improvement of cross-modal research development innovation. FOX is a 30-month project under the Horizon 2020 topic of MG-8.1b-2014 - Smarter design, construction and maintenance.