On the 3rd and 4th of November, the National Access Point Coordination Organisation for Europe (NAPCORE) held its first edition of the Mobility Data Days in Paris. ERTICO played an active role in the debate by presenting how some of the innovation platforms, such as TM2.0, TN-ITS and the supported platform of DFRS, can help contribute to the organisation’s aim.
NAPCORE brings together over 80 different public and private entities to enhance the harmonisation of the NAPs. The organisation aims to leverage the massive amount of data available on transport and mobility and make it more accessible, ensuring its quality and exploring new use cases to reach a seamless European road network. The session in Paris, which had strong physical participation, established the guidelines for the next year to achieve NAPCORE’s milestones.
Before the official Mobility Data Days kick-off, the Advisory Board met on 2nd November to define action plans on strategic topics: the role of the NAPs within the Mobility Data Space, the future of NAPCORE, the revision of the Real Time Traffic Information (RTTI) Delegate Regulation, and the implementation of the Multi-Modal Travel Information Systems (MMTIS). After this discussion, a series of workshops explored ways to expand NAPCORE’s reach to other relevant use cases, such as parking and cycling. With this approach, the organisation seeks to involve the whole European transport and mobility community, leveraging the data available to unify European roads.
During the event, stakeholders from the European ITS community actively participated and shared exchanges of best practices and methodologies to broaden the role of NAPs, setting NAPCORE as a space for collaboration.
Bringing the Know-How on Knowledge Sharing
Members of the ERTICO team joined the event to share the experiences on advancing collaboration between the public and private sectors, a core aspect of the project’s success. Mr Joost Vantomme, CEO at ERTICO, stated, ‘We can be instrumental in showcasing the value of bringing public and private together with seven mobility data spaces that we manage to facilitate through ERTICO’.
TM2.0, TN-ITS and DFRS work closely with NAPCORE to provide their know-how on interactive traffic management, the standardisation of authoritative spatial road data for road efficiency, and data sharing for road safety, respectively. These platforms were presented during the event as best practices with the capacity to add value to the data-sharing chain.
Dr Johanna Tzanidaki, Chief Innovation Officer at ERTICO, stated that the encounter ‘was a very important and very much-needed meeting for the entire community working with mobility data’, particularly the discussion around the ‘relationship between National Access Points and the Mobility Data Spaces and their cooperative coexistence’. Dr Tzanidaki added that ‘it is up to us to define clear roles and responsibilities that include all the stakeholders and include all the data in the mobility ecosystem.’
Core Outcomes of the Event
After a gripping three-day discussion, the Mobility Data Days’ main conclusion is that there is still a long way to go to reach the project’s ambitious objectives. The NAPCORE community is willing to work together to achieve them. Data collection, accessibility, multimodality, and interoperability were at the centre of the debate, striving to turn the project into an operational entity in which NAPs operate harmoniously across Europe.
The next edition of the Mobility Data Days will take place next year in Budapest. Until then, it is time to analyse all the conclusions drawn from this event to maximise the project results before its end date in December 2024.
NAPCORE is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union.
