Neelie Kroes Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda attended this year’s iMobility Award Ceremony at the 2012 ITS World Congress in Vienna. Ms Kroes welcomed the attendees by highlighting the importance of the iMobility Awards in recognising and promoting ambitious and innovative iMobility deployments paving the way to safe smart and clean road mobility.
Presiding over the Awards Ceremony at the iCar Support stand in the 2012 ITS World Congress Ms Kroes congratulated all the nominees paying tribute to their high calibre and professionalism before calling the three winners to the stage to hand over their awards. M Kroes underlined “the iMobility Awards are the perfect occasion to introduce to the ITS World Congress delegates those who have been recognised by the ITS community as paving the way to the mobility of the future.”
In the industry/technology category TNO – represented by Joelle van den Broek – were recognised for their work in creating testing and realising new transport solutions to make mobility cleaner safer and more reliable. In particular TNO’s work together with 20 other companies on the Dutch Integrated Test site for Cooperative Mobility (DITCM) one of Europe’s première field labs for cooperative mobility was instrumental in securing the award. Thanking the iMobility Forum for the award Mrs van den Broek said “We would like to share our way of working with the rest of Europe to build a European ecosystem in SmartMobility i an open innovation setting”.
In the policy category the European Commission – represented by Emilio Dávila González Project Officer (eCall) DG Connect – was rewarded for its vision and work in bringing the eCall initiative to life. The European Commission has been instrumental in successfully promoting and creating a Europe-wide range of stakeholders working with one vision – that of making eCall available in all vehicles in Europe with a service working seamlessly wherever the vehicle is home or abroad. Mr González said “I would like to thank the iMobility Community for this honour.” Paying tribute to his colleagues past and present in DG Connect and Commissioners Reading and Kroes Mr González stressed “It is not just the Commission. If we have progressed in the deployment of eCall it is because many stakeholders have worked together.”
In the national/local category the Austrian motorway company ASFINAG – represented by its CTO Bernd Datler – were recognised for their work on cooperative as well as co-modal transport services demonstrating where user orientation and technical feasibility. A key component in this success was the setting up of a dedicated 18 strong team of experts specialised in bridging the gap between research development and full-scale deployment. Mr. Datler strongly recommended to other countries that they “encourage parties to start project like these with some sort of public co-funding. I think this is a critical factor to make major achievements in the ITS field.”
A special discretionary iMobility Award was given by Mrs Kroes to Jean-Pierre Medevielle Deputy General Director of IFSTTAR (the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport Development and Networks) in recognition of his dedication throughout his working life to transport and intelligent mobility. As Mrs Kroes pointed out “Mr Medevielle committed to ITS before the name even existed” when he participated in the ESPRIT programme more than 30 years ago.
For more information please contact Laetitia Fernandez.
Link to original Article
http://www.ertico.com/neelie-kroes-presides-over-the-imobility-awards-2012-at-the-2012-its-world-congress/
Original Publication Date: Wed 31 Oct 2012
