News

Funding secured for further knowledge creation in Connected and Cooperative Automated Mobility

Nov, 09 2022

As a result of SAFER's long and successful work with data collection and analysis to ensure a safe introduction of automated and connected vehicles, we have been granted the opportunity to continue this work through a new project funded within the Horizon European framework program, as part of CCAM partnership work programme 2021.

The new project is called FAME (Framework for coordination of Automated Mobility in Europe) and the goal is to establish a European framework for testing on public roads, enable evaluations with common methodology, engage an active community of stakeholders across the complex cross-sectoral value chain, and capitalize on shared knowledge, to improve cooperation, consensus building and data sharing for CCAM (Cooperative connected and automated mobility) testing and large-scale demonstration activities in Europe.

Erik Svanberg, project manager at SAFER, is commenting on the upcoming research:

”Development of the FESTA handbook starting in 2007 was the starting point for systematic approach for testing vehicle functions on public roads in Europe, then followed by the Data Sharing Framework. We now continue this work by including components of legal and ethical approvals, a common evaluation methodology to ensure comparable high level analysis results, and a data exchange platform. We believe that having all these components as part of one single framework will have a positive effect on the rapid development of CCAM in Europe.” 

Common evaluation methodology
It can be quite cumbersome to compare the analysis results from different projects, albeit covering the same research area. FAME addresses this by developing a common evaluation methodology. The methodology will set recommendations for the high level analysis, for example impact assessment and cost benefit analysis, with the ambition of transparent research results. The work is led by VTT and the SAFER partner Volvo Technology is contributing. 

Development of CCAM test data space
Data from tests on public road will become ever more important for development, validation, and analysis of the effects of CCAM applications. Chalmers University is leading the work package establishing a data platform built on the common principles of GAIA-X and federated data exchange. The ambition is to have European and national CCAM projects sharing data using this platform, during the project lifetime and after. The standard for federated data sharing is something EU commits to and invests heavily in. By using the CCAM test data space early on in the development, future applications will be easier to adapt to data spaces for production purpose.

“I’m enthusiastic and look forward to implementing the Data Sharing Framework on a ‘real’ distributed data exchange platform. The principles are in-line with those we have implemented at SAFER for the last 15 years. We now take this to a European level and we want by this initiative, from a SAFER perspective, give our researchers’ access to more relevant datasets“, Erik says.

The project is also coordinating the Connected and Automated Driving conference, the next one takes place in May 2023, as well as maintaining the CAD knowledgebase at https://connectedautomateddriving.eu.
SAFER's research area for Safety performance evaluation will host the project. The overall budget is € 5,682,500.00 Euro and the project will continue during 36 months. The project is coordinated by ERTICO and SAFER partners Chalmers and Volvo technology are among the 23 participating organisations. 

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