Dear Readers,
It is our pleasure to launch the final (4th) issue of OJP4Danube Newsletter. By this issue, we would like to wrap up all significant OJP4Danube-related events and activities and focus on the major outcomes of the project!
CONTENTS:
- Welcome from ELSOL
- OJP4Danube Status: Outputs and Deliverables of WPs (March 2022–September 2022)
- Current Events: Conferences, Meetings, Presentations and Publications (March 2022–September 2022)
- Prospective Project-related Events (September 2022–December 2022)
- Status of WPC Deliverables
- OJP4Danube Social Media Channels Update
Welcome from ELSOL
ELECTRONIC SOLUTIONS (ELSOL) is an Engineering and Consultancy Company specialized in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and Communication fields. The company was founded in 1991 and has extensive expertise in consultancy, design and small scale implementation of Integrated Systems, Test Systems, Pilot Projects and Demonstrators related to ITS for road and waterborne transport.
ELSOL has also been involved in several European Projects for harmonized deployments in the smart mobility sector: HeERO (Harmonized European eCall Pilots), the European ITS Platform (EIP), EIP+, The EU ITS Platform (EU EIP), CROCODILE, DATEX II, LinkingDanube, and NAPCORE.
Within the project LinkingDanube (2017–2019), ELSOL was leading the Deployment Package and was directly responsible for developing the Central Node and the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the so-called “Danube Region Journey Planner” – a proof-of-concept of linking different mobility services. OJP4Danube (2020–2022) is built directly on the architecture and interfaces developed in LinkingDanube, but takes the next step towards the preparation of an operational OJP service in the Danube Region. OJP4Danube focuses on making the basic service operational, and on the integration of bicycle routing to enable the linking of the two transport modes of rail and cycling as part of a multimodal, OJP-based travel information service. In the course of the project, further developments of the OJP profile will be implemented with regard to the linking of rail and bicycle as well as the stronger integration of bicycle routing. Owing to its technical expertise, ELSOL is a part of the Core development team in the project and is leading “WP T3 Pilot - Cycling in multimodal trips”. Putting forward the knowledge from LinkingDanube, ELSOL as the WP T3 leader took over significant tasks in system specification: development of the OJP Profile, technical design & architecture, as well as development and testing of the OJP end user service Apps. The Central Node (the Active System as it is defined in OJP4Danube) is already developed and in testing phase for better integration with the six Passive Systems. The Danube Region Journey.
Planner App is also in the final testing phase. This app has two versions: a native Android and iOS Mobile App, and a mobile friendly Webpage.
These achievements contribute significantly to the two major objectives of OJP4Danube: to increase the efficiency of the multimodal network, and to improve the available existing digital infrastructure and services regarding multimodal transport.
Sincerely Yours,
Sorin Dumitrescu
Executive Manager
ELECTRONIC SOLUTIONS
Bucharest, Romania
OJP4Danube Status: Outputs and Deliverables of WPs (March 2022–September 2022)
OJP4Danube — Project Implementation Activities by ATE, Vienna, Austria
D.T1.3.1 – National (organisational) Action Plans
The activity will result in one action plan per country. The topics of the National Action plans include the current situation in the partner countries and the political attitude towards OJP. In addition, the partners provide insight into their countries' plans for the implementation of OJP and the systematic roll out of implementation. The deliverables shape a basis for the workshop (D.T4.3.1) and the output (O.T1.2)
D.T3.4.1 – Report on Demonstration and Evaluation
D.T.3.4.1 is part of WP T3 - Pilot – Cycling and multimodal journeys. It will summarize the activities carried out (methods and tools used) and their results. The deliverable will thus show to which extent the objectives (use cases) have been met. There will also be insights into the quality of the developed service.
D.T4.3.1 – Concept for the Inter-organisational Learning Session
This deliverable is part of WP T4 - Transfer of insights and support of future users. In D.T4.3.1, the concept for a workshop is outlined. It has the purpose of presenting the existing experiences with the OJP implementation and deriving best practice examples. D.T1.3.1 and O.T1.2 shape the basis for this workshop. It will take place on October 7th, 2022, Vienna, together with the 5th and last SCOM.
O.T1.2 - Organisational Action Plans for OJP Deployment in the Operative Environment (for AT, SK, SI, HU, RO, CZ)
This output is a more aggregated version of D.T1.3.1 and puts the Action plans into context. It compiles all six Action plans, summarizes the current situation of each partner country, and gives insight into plans towards OJP implementation. The output will also outline valuable lessons learned and “best practice” examples.
OJP4Danube — Project Enhancement at the University of Zilina (UNIZA), Zilina, Slovakia
Intending to ensure a continuation of the successful implementation of the OJP4Danube project, the UNIZA team actively contributed to supporting the project coordinator, WP, and task leaders with implementing the project activities. Apart from performing routine administrative and financial duties of the project, UNIZA technically assisted ATE, task leader, in demonstrating and evaluating pilot service within task A.T3.4 “Demonstration and evaluation of pilot service.” Furthermore, relevant inputs to A.T4.2 “Webinar/Academic courses on OJP” were provided by UNIZA to develop a course syllabus, including the necessary knowledge on the OJP approach and the related standards. In parallel with implementing scheduled activities within technical WPs, the project communication team based at UNIZA made a considerable effort to promote and disseminate the project activities and results by participating in notable promotional events and updating available practices and project channels for communication and dissemination. For instance, the UNIZA team planned and submitted a Special Interest Session (SIS) proposal entitled “Speeding up European integrated multimodal journey planning” to the European ITS Congress 2022. After receiving the confirmation from the event organizer, UNIZA, with the support of project partners and invited experts, hosted the session at European ITS Congress in Toulouse in May-June 2022. Moreover, in close collaboration with researchers from partner organizations, UNIZA successfully submitted a conference paper entitled “Enabling multimodal cross-border trip planning in the EU: Learnings from the Interreg OJP4Danube project” to the Transport Research Arena (TRA) conference, which will be held in Lisbon in November 2022. This conference publication has been accepted for presentation at this conference.
Effective collaboration between UNIZA and project partners resulted in developing the following deliverables:
D.T1.3.1 National (organizational) Action plans
UNIZA supported ZSSK with developing the deliverable D.T1.3.1 “National (organizational) action plans (Slovakia)” which is a basis for Output T1.2 “Action Plans for OJP,” and this output will be used in WPT4 for the transfer of knowledge
D.T3.4.1 Report on demonstration and evaluation
UNIZA contributed to implementation of the task A.T3.4 “Demonstration and evaluation of pilot service” led by ATE and preparation of the D.T3.4.1 “Report on demonstration and evaluation,” including test case templates for subcontractor (A.T3.4)
D.T4.3.1 - Concept for the inter-organisational learning session
UNIZA also contributed to the deliverable D.T4.3.2 by providing relevant inputs and preparing the webinar/academic course (webcast-video training) entitled “Assessment of local journey planners, use cases definition and UI design.”
OJP4Danube — Successful System Interconnection Testing according to the OJP4Danube Specification at the University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
As part of the project to implement the National Access Point for the exchange of data on multimodal travel and to establish a route guide in the Republic of Croatia (Hrvatske ceste Ltd), system interconnection testing was successfully carried out according to the OJP4Danube specification. The specification was developed to connect transnational, multimodal travel information and route planning for environmentally friendly mobility in the Danube Region and is harmonized with the corresponding specifications at the European level. As a partner in the project, the Faculty of Transport Sciences of the University of Zagreb (Intelligent Transport Systems Department - ZITS) is in the final phase of implementing the project OJP4Danube - Coordination mechanisms for a multimodal cross-border traveler information network based on OJP for Danube Region. The project's goal is to develop a multimodal cross-border passenger information network that connects local and regional public transport networks with the main traffic corridors, which will be enriched with bicycle routes and bicycle travel information necessary for multimodal trips. Within this project, an advanced technical specification is being developed for connecting transnational, multimodal travel information and route planning for environmentally friendly mobility in the Danube Region. In the meantime, Hrvatske ceste d.o.o. initiated the project of establishing a National Access Point for the exchange of data on multimodal travel and establishing a route guide in the Republic of Croatia. The Faculty of Transport Sciences made a significant contribution to the preparation of this project, especially in terms of its harmonization with the objectives of the OJP4Danube project. The operational implementation was entrusted to the companies Ericsson Nikola Tesla and Realis - information technology d.o.o. (Slovenia). As part of the project implementation of the National Access Point for the exchange of data on multimodal travel and establishing a route guide in the Republic of Croatia, connectivity testing of the newly implemented system (Phase 1) was performed according to the OJP4Danube specification. The connectivity testing of the two systems was successfully realized, confirming the technical prerequisites for implementing the OJP4Danube service. Successful implementation of the API according to the OJP4Danube specification has been demonstrated. With this step, the responsible stakeholder in the Republic of Croatia, Croatian Roads Ltd, took the first step towards full integration. The activities include collecting various multimodal data, preparing exchange points for public transport, data for bicycle transport and harmonizing this data with other partners.
Current Events: Conferences, Meetings, Presentations and Publications (March 2022–September 2022)
ITS European Congress in Toulouse, France (May 30–June 1, 2022)
As was announced in the previous newsletter (#3), the OJP4Danube team hosted a special session at the 14th edition of the ITS European Congress in Toulouse entitled “Speeding up European integrated multimodal journey planning” which took place on May 30th. The motivation for the session was to highlight the need not only for multimodal cross-border travel information integration, but also for the future integration of the various projects working towards implementing seamless and coordinated multimodal journey planning services based on the ITS directive across Europe i.e. the OJP4 family of projects and Ride2Rail.
Noteworthy, this session was picked up by the rapporteur at the closing ceremony: https://youtu.be/Pvfzd6uVr9o (listen at 32:00). His comment, “Multimodal journey planning has been a congress regular, there’s been several mentions of the need to improve it. But we might learn some lessons from the OJP4Danube, LinkingAlps, EUSpirit, Ride2Rail projects. They all have different architectural approaches, different data sharing, variable definitions and different use cases.”. We think the message was clear. Considering the difficulty in organizing the travel by train from Slovakia to the conference in France, we feel the time is ripe for OJP4Europe.
Overall, the ITS European Congress was an inspiring event, and it was positively surprising to hear an official shift in high-level goals from ‘safety and efficiency’ to ‘sustainability and resilience’. With the climate crisis coming to the fore this year in many countries concurrently, we can expect this to be a rallying call for future editions of the congress as well.
CSUM 6th Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility in Skiathos, Greece (August 31–September 2, 2022)
Domokos Esztergár-Kiss from ICS presented the main results of the method development of the OJP4Danube project at the Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility (CSUM 2022). The presentation entitled "Developing a Heuristic Route Planning Method to Support Seamless Mobility Solutions" included the introduction to the concept of the project, the elaborated algorithms, the first results created, as well as the future development opportunities. The researcher of ICS also participated in several related sessions, such as "Promoting active mobility", "User centric transport" and "New energy and mobility outlook". These related topics provided useful ideas for the further implementation of the project, and the exchange of experience with researchers working in similar fields also proved to be beneficial.
Prospective Project-related Events and Activities (September 2022–December 2022)
OJP4Danube Final Event
The OJP4Danube Final Event will take place on November 29 in Ljubljana as part of the Danube Region Transport Days. The results of the project will be presented there, and it will be a great chance to come together as project partners and report on the successes and important conclusions of the project.
LinkingAlps Final Event
The LinkingAlps Final Event is of great importance and relevance for the OJP4Danube consortium, and everyone interested in OJP and its implementation. There, a number of interesting presentations and discussion panels are on the agenda. In addition to the project consortium, speakers from the European Commission and the Interreg Alpine Space programme are also invited. It takes place on September 20th and 21st, 2022 in Aix-en-Provence. For more information, visit the LinkingAlps homepage.
Transport Research Arena Conference in Lisbon
As the Danube Region Journey Planner (DRJP) technical solution is getting ready to be tested by external users (https://app.ojp4danube.eu/#/), on November 2022 will be time to present the Core Development Team’s (CDT) results. This will take place in mid-November at the largest transportation conference in Europe – the Transport Research Arena or TRA https://traconference.eu/ – where 10 CDT members successfully submitted a conference paper entitled “Enabling multimodal cross-border journey planning in the EU”. Key contributors of the different building blocks of the DRJP will therefore attend to inform and inspire a large European audience by the OJP4Danube achievements and its potential for scaling up to other countries.
Status of WPC Deliverables
D.C. 1.3. Project Leaflet: e-version published 10/12/2021
A total of 1100 printed versions sent out to physical addresses of project partners in January 2022
D.C. 1.3. Brochure on the OJP4Danube Strategy (policy brief format): e-version published 20/12/2021
A total of 450 printed versions sent out to physical addresses of project partners in January 2022
OJP4Danube Social Media Channels Update
The OJP4Danube website serves as a dissemination and communication instrument for the project. The project website is envisaged as the main gateway to the outside world, including key project information. The project website is hosted by INTERREG DTP platform. Every month the UNIZA Communication Team publishes a story about one of the partners of OJP4Danube on its social media. You can also find all current and prospective events on our Facebook and LinkedIn channels. See the latest ones:
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