The 3rd Stakeholder Conference of the i4Df initiative took place at the Ministry for Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) in Bonn on the 12th of December 2019. This was the third in a series of four i4Df Stakeholder Conferences that will culminate in the launch of the coordination mechanism at the TRA 2020 Conference in Helsinki on 26th -30th of April 2020. Attended by about 50 strategic stakeholder representatives from National Transport Infrastructure Authorities (NTIAs), industrial lead suppliers, research providers and public-sector innovation programme owners, the 3rd i4Df Stakeholder Conference gave the opportunity to develop an effective and structured dialogue on the needs, priorities and challenges of the forthcoming coordination mechanism for the modernization of transport infrastructure.
The Conference was opened by Ursula Blume and Bernard Gyergyay (BASt, DE) who gave the first welcome speech. Three subsequent key presentations were delivered by Birgitta Worringen (Deputy Director-General BMVI, DE), Cees Brandsen (Director RWS,NL) and Torsten Klimke (Deputy head of Unit-Innovation and Research, DG Move). All the speakers mentioned the imperative need for collaboration among the European countries towards a fully developed coordination mechanism for the modernization of multimodal transnational transport infrastructure.
Key part of the Conference was a panel discussion with high-level representatives from the European Commission (Torsten Klimke- Deputy Head of Unit, Innovation and research, DG Move, BE), National Transport Infrastructure Authorities (Przemyslaw Zukowski- Deputy Director, Ministry of Marine Economy and Inland Navigation, PL / Daniel Kilcher- Head of Strategy and Research, ASTRA, CH) and high level representatives from the i4Df consortium partners (Stefan Strick-President, BASt, DE / Anttila Virpi, Head of Strategy, Väylä, FI / Cees Brandsen-Managing Director, RWS, NL). During the panel discussion (with topic: “A cooperation mechanism that delivers value to National Transport Infrastructure Authorities”) each panellist presented and detailed a statement about the suggested cooperation mechanism. This was followed by questions from the presenters and the participants. All the Conference attendees were subsequently invited to react with a “like” or “dislike” to the six panellist statements, which were displayed on a massive panel.
In the afternoon session, after Bernard Gyergyay’s (BASt, DE) introductory speech, three presentations followed by 1) Michael Nikowitz (bmvit, AUS) who described IFA 3.1 “Smart data and information ecosystem for accommodating automated and connected transport” and presented the activities of the Federal Ministry of Austria towards this direction and introduced the best practice cooperation between Austria and Hungary, 2) Arjan Hijdra (RWS, NL) who described IFA 1.2 “Integrated Infrastructure Network Management”, emphasized the need for expanding of the existing collaboration of European infrastructure authorities and described the steps followed in order to prioritize trends through PESTLE (Political, Economic, Societal, Technological, Legal, Environmental) analysis, and 3) Markus Auerbach (BASt, DE) who described IFA 2.1 “Decarbonisation of infrastructure management” and mentioned the need for determining links with the wider stakeholder ecosystem.
The 3rd i4Df Stakeholder Conference was concluded with a brief wrap-up session, in which Tiina Jauhiainen (Vayla/Fl) provided key findings of the respective discussion groups and gave a brief overview of the upcoming TRA2020 conference in Helsinki.
