Call: Big data in Transport: Research opportunities, challenges and limitations

Within this programme Horizon 2020 will provide funding for a resource efficient transport that respects the environment, aims at a better mobility, less congestion, more safety and security, supports a global leadership for the European transport industry and targets a socio-economic and behavioural research and forward looking activities for policy making.

Transport is on the brink of a new era of smart mobility where infrastructure, transport means, travellers and goods will be increasingly interconnected to achieve optimised door-to-door mobility, higher safety, less environmental impact and lower operational costs.

Specific topics for the calls:

• Reducing energy consumption and environmental impact of aviation
• Reducing aviation noise
• Maintaining industrial leadership in aeronautics
• Breakthrough innovation
• Identification of gaps, barriers and needs in the aviation research
• Innovation for energy efficiency and emission control in waterborne transport
• Development, production and use of high performance and lightweight materials for vessels and equipment
• New and improved transport concepts in waterborne transport
• Complex and value-added specialised vessels
• Addressing aviation safety challenges
• Protection of all road users in crashes
• Safer waterborne transport and maritime operations
• Transport infrastructure innovation to increase the transport system safety at modal and intermodal level (including nodes and interchanges)
• Behavioural aspects for safer transport
• Euro-African initiative on road safety and traffic management
• Increasing the take up and scale-up of innovative solutions to achieve sustainable mobility in urban areas
• Supporting 'smart electric mobility' in cities
• Innovative approaches for integrating urban nodes in the TEN-T core network corridors
• Facilitating public procurement of innovative sustainable transport and mobility solutions in urban areas
• New ways of supporting development and implementation of neighbourhood-level and urban-district-level transport innovations
• Networked and efficient logistics clusters
• Innovative ICT solutions for future logistics operations
• Promoting the deployment of green transport, towards Eco-labels for logistics
• Potential of the Physical Internet
• Innovative concepts, systems and services towards 'mobility as a service'
• Large-scale demonstration(s) of cooperative ITS
• Roadmap, new business models, awareness raising, support and incentives for the roll-out of ITS
• Resilience to extreme (natural and man-made) events
• Optimisation of transport infrastructure including terminals
• The Port of the future
• Research, technology development and market trends for the European transport manufacturing industries
• Big data in Transport: Research opportunities, challenges and limitations
• Assessing future requirements for skills and jobs across transport modes and systems
• Improving accessibility, inlcusive mobility and equity: new tools and business models for public transport in prioritised areas
• Shifting paradigms: Exploring the dynamics of individual preferences, behaviours and lifestyles influencing travel and mobility choices
• Innovation awards for students and researchers in the context of the Transport Research Arena conference - TRA 2018

Technological developments, particularly related to the extended and expanding use of ICT in the transport sector, allow the collection of unprecedented volumes of data across all modes and transport systems. This big data has generated a strong interest in the transport research community as well as in the relevant industries and among policy makers.

From freight transport and supply chain optimisation to evacuation modelling and crowd dynamics under extreme phenomena, and from short-term traffic forecasting to travel behavioural research and the use of social media for efficient transport operations, big data has created a wide spectrum of challenges and opportunities in the field of transport research. Indicative areas of research could, for example, cover travel behaviour (by incorporating in modelling processes heterogeneous sources of information), logistics and consumer preferences, network capacity planning and optimisation (e.g. in the case of toll roads), risk management, response to extreme weather events or other emergency situations. Disaggregated data analysis by users' groups (e.g. age, gender) will contribute to better focus specific needs and trends. At the same time, the collection and possible exploitation of big data pose a number of questions both in methodological terms as well as in legal, institutional and social ones, which need to be addressed. The main challenge is therefore to investigate the implications of the utilisation of big data in the transport field.

At least one legal entity established in an EU Member State or Horizon 2020 associated country. 

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between 0.5 and 1.5 million € each would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Funding rate: 100% 

Link to the National Contact Point Finder.