Latest news from the Transport Research Knowledge Centre

Dear readers,

We are back with the latest news about the Transport Research Knowledge Centre (TRKC). The TRKC is a free database featuring up-to-date information on European transport research activities. It enables policy makers, researchers and other stakeholders to access results of EU or nationally financed transport research in the European Research Area (ERA).

In this bulletin, we report on the following issues:

• New Policy Brochure on River Information Systems published
• The Transport Research Knowledge Centre at WCTR 2010

Enjoy reading!
The TRKC project team

NEWS

New Policy Brochure on River Information Systems published

The TRKC has published a new Policy Brochure on River Information Services. These concise studies help you to discover how transport research is contributing to policy-making and transport operations, illustrated by examples of particular achievements.

The new brochure focuses on information services for inland navigation, known in Europe as River Information Services (RIS). River Information Services are defined as a concept of harmonised information services to support traffic and transport management in inland navigation, including interfaces to other modes of transport.

The new Policy Brochure on River Information Services can be downloaded from the Policy Publications section of the TRKC website.

The Transport Research Knowledge Centre at WCTR 2010

Following a very successful participation at the Transport Research Arena in Brussels earlier in June, the outputs of the Transport Research Knowledge Centre were further disseminated at a special session on transport research knowledge bases as part of the World Conference on Transport Research (WCTR) held 11-15 July in Lisbon, Portugal. The conference, organised every three years, was attended by researchers, managers, policy makers and educators from all over the world.

The special session on transport research knowledge bases, organised and chaired by Dr Damian Stantchev from Leeds University, attracted the interest of researchers, academics and policy makers from countries well beyond the boundaries of the European Union.

Two of the presentations focused on the achievements of the Transport Research Knowledge Centre. Damian Stantchev outlined the concepts and previous experiences on which the development of the TRKC was built, as well as the processes for the collection of research information and the challenges in collating and interpreting it.

While the TRKC should improve access to European transport research results, it still provides no guarantee that those results will be used effectively in practice. An element of the TRKC consortium’s work has therefore attempted to address the challenges of uptake of research results by education, as outlined by Dr Paolo Delle Site of Sapienza University of Rome.

Other examples of transport knowledge databases, such as the International Transport Research Documentation (ITRD) and the European Conference of Transport Research Institutes (ECTRI) databases were presented by Neil Paulley from TRL Ltd in the United Kingdom.

Chris Pringle’s presentation of Ken Winter’s paper on the results of a 2007 user satisfaction survey of the Transportation Research Information Services (TRIS) database created by the US Transportation Research Board (TRB) brought a truly international dimension to the session.