In association with the 10th UIC World Congress on High Speed and also hosted by TCDD, the members of the UIC IRRB met for a plenary meeting in Ankara. The meeting venue was the Ankara Hotel which is in the newly opened Ankara High Speed Railway Station.
Among the issues, all of global importance, were topics such as the UIC “Global Debate on Mobility Challenges for the Future Society”, which will be held in Warsaw, Poland on 15 and 16 November 2018, hosted by the Polish rail research institute IK. The debate will focus on the following areas:
- New mobility system concepts
- Towards an integrated transport system
- IT – new opportunities and threats
- Competitiveness of transport stakeholders
- Sustainability and resilience of the transport system
A shortlist of important key-note speakers has been prepared and the final choice will soon be made. Some of them are well known railway experts while others have their expertise in other modes of transport or even beyond transport. The outcome of the discussions and debate will contribute to the update of the UIC GVRD report – the Global Vision for Railway Development – which will be due during the latter part of 2019.
Mr Guven Kandemir, IRRB Vice-chairman and host and chairing this meeting, gave a very interesting presentation about the challenges the railways will have to face in the future. The findings were based on an ongoing analysis of many important research projects, policy documents and research and innovation roadmaps. Following this, the Czech members, representing CD-VUZ gave an update on the developments of the WORC database containing global information on research institutes, their fields of expertise and their projects. A demo version is on line and can be found through a link from the UIC Research Portal www.railway-research.org or directly through http://www.rworc.org/WORC4_test1/ . UIC members are invited to check out this database and if possible to upload information regarding their research capacity and expertise.
Call opened for the UIC Global Rail Research & Innovation Awards 2018
As part of the IRRB meeting, the new Call for nominations for the 4th edition of the UIC Global Research & Innovation Awards was opened. The Awards ceremony will be held during the UIC General Assembly in Paris on 6 December. Railway researchers will now be able to upload information about their innovative research projects for the six thematic Awards as well as for the Young Researchers Award 2018 using the following link: http://uic-innovation-awards.org/
A Call for Sponsors has at the same time been opened and a sponsorship package describing the various way to support the Global Awards and their winners can be requested at the email contact mentioned below. Two organisations – JR RTRI and KRRI – have already informed the IRRB of their wish to act as Award sponsors!
