News

2022 was a very positive year for SAFER; all-time high in the number of projects in the portfolio, concluded knowledge building activities and academic publications! SAFER's annual report for the seventeenth operational year has now been launched. The report is a summary of the effects and outcome of the traffic safety research carried out at the center between January 1st and December 31st 2022.

What an incredible positive year of collaboration in traffic safety research we have had! First, we can finally meet again after the pandemic, and the added value in physical meetings becomes so obvious; the increased creativity and the opportunity to add perspectives and get to know each other even more, are just a few of them. Having said that, we also clearly acknowledge the value in the digital formats, allowing for a wide engagement that has grown immensely during the pandemic.

We are now in the last year of our current stage – and the formation of SAFER’s future is in full swing! We are very pleased with the great commitment to creating our joint research agenda for SAFER’s next stage, which starts in January 2024. We have identified common challenges as well as how SAFER could become even more attractive as a collaboration platform. We are looking forward to setting a solid and challenging strategic research agenda for SAFER Stage 6 with the right partners, relevant topics and continue to create a strong commitment for the next stage.

The annual report contains lots of information about the development of our collaboration, our project results and activities. We are particularly proud of how well we have succeeded in positioning SAFER within the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme. In the first two sets of calls no less than four large projects, initiated by activities within SAFER, have been funded. The projects are now engaging many of our partners and their researchers.

The fact that traffic safety is increasingly becoming established as a part of the global sustainability agenda is also encouraging to see. Agenda 2030 and the recommendations from the UN conference in Stockholm in 2020 are now being used in society and many of our partners are sharing their strategies on how to become sustainable. An exciting example on how SAFER takes on the recommendations is our workshop series for co-creation of a sustainable, future urban environment that we have carried out together with the industry, academy, research institutes and societal actors, using the framework of Gothenburg Green City Zone. The results of the research will contribute to build valuable knowledge to strengthen the regional actors' competitiveness and at the same time contribute to a more sustainable future.

Our pre-study program continues to pleasantly surprise us; we have received numerous creative ideas from our partners and the results are generally very good as these, albeit small, projects create valuable knowledge and often subsequent larger projects. Since the program started in 2020, 41 project ideas have been submitted and 26 pre-studies have been funded.

During 2022, we have also continued with thought-provoking seminars, project presentations, applications, new grants and dissertations. It is impressive and gratifying to see all the research that is taking place within the broad community of SAFER, and this year we likely set a new a record in the number of completed activities, more than 80 events were arranged. Another all-time-high is the number of ongoing projects; never before has our project portfolio hosted so many projects; 86 research projects have been connected to the SAFER partnership during 2022.

Some other highlights you must not miss are the launch of our new asset – the SAFER Data catalogue, that will help our researchers to get access to high-quality data and that our world leading SAFER Human Body Model's research results are moving towards providing an open-available model globally, to enable a wider use of the tool. Welcome to learn more about these initiatives and much more in the report, see here!

We would like to thank you all for your great commitment and engagement during 2022 and we are looking forward to yet another inspiring year to co-create knowledge about developing a safe and sustainable transport system for all.