The first half of this year has delivered great and inspiring results: Winning the HR Excellence Award, acquiring over six new European-funded projects, and organising the outstanding 15th edition of the ITS European Congress in Lisbon. To kick-start this autumn semester, Mr Joost Vantomme, ERTICO CEO, has the great pleasure of sharing his thoughts on some key milestones from the past months.

Returning to a vibrant and energised team after the summer break is truly a motivational boost. In this second year as CEO of ERTICO, I have the honour to continue this remarkable journey with great colleagues. This year, we focused on updating our Priorities and Operating Plan, and the 2023 Annual Review and Annual Video entails more of these key achievements.

Reflecting on the past months, our team has worked hard and passionately to deliver significant results. We truly live our new values: Cooperative, Impactful, Open, Passionate and Visionary. Developing, promoting and facilitating the deployment of intelligent and sustainable mobility services and solutions by providing a multi-stakeholder platform is our DNA. We foster thought leadership and knowledge sharing through continuous dialogues and collaboration with our Partners and external players across the entire mobility ecosystem.

Broadening our Network across the Smart Mobility ecosystem

Our Partnership is becoming ever bigger and broader, reflecting the growing ecosystem. Since the beginning of 2023 we have had the great pleasure of welcoming ten new members to the ERTICO Partnership: Tractebel Engineering, BEIA Consult, Cefriel, LuxMobility, TOFAS, City of Lamia, AVERE, KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence, General Motors, Amazon Web Services. This shows a strong interest in becoming part of our unique network to help advance solutions across the smart and sustainable mobility agenda and in sync with the EU agenda. It also mirrors our Partners’ willingness to lead the digital transformation of transport through knowledge sharing. This is what we offered through the second edition of the FOCUS ON Partnership event on mobility standards, which focused on the strategic value chains but also trends and challenges across the eight sectors of the Partnership.

In June 2023, we invited the ERTICO Partnership to attend the yearly Activity Development Days (ADD) to discuss and align future priorities and the upcoming Call for Tenders. We also held, hopefully, our last virtual General Assembly, presenting a healthy, thriving and sound organisation. On this occasion, we released the 2023 Annual Review and video of the year. Next year, the 2024 edition of the General Assembly will be hosted as an in-person meeting on 11 June. This will be a great opportunity for all our Partners and shareholders to come together for another great networking opportunity. Pencil your agenda for our most important Brussels-based event of the first semester.

Advancing Innovation and Deployment of new technologies and solutions

We gained strong advocacy and legitimacy across all our Focus Areas: Connected, Cooperative & Automated Mobility, Clean & Eco-Mobility, Urban Mobility and Transport & Logistics. This year, some of our flagship projects, including 5G-MOBIX, FENIX Network and MODALES are ending their lifecycles. In contrast, we won over six new European-funded projects. With this great achievement, we continue this journey with a large number of additional proposal submissions this month.

Ongoing discussions and future focus

The first half of 2023 has brought stronger connections within the field of urban mobility, particularly as a selected member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Urban Mobility, where our team leads the subgroup on the future of mobility and the use of space. We are also particularly pleased by the European Commission’s invitation to deliver our views and insights at the Urban Mobility Days in Seville next month.

ERTICO make great advances by making new alliances with other sectors, such as the electromobility and telecoms sectors, tapping into the potential of clean and urban mobility, delivering on 5G and 6G projects with showcases in the logistics area and displaying the possibilities of a data-driven economy with data sharing through various platforms hosted by ERTICO.

Parallel to these collaborative efforts, we continue to connect the dots: Signing MoU with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and ITS Korea and further strengthening our cooperation with the Network of ITS Nationals and the UK Transport Technology Forum (TTF). More to come in the second half of this year.

We will continue this journey to further improve the movement of people and goods seamlessly and ubiquitously. The topic of data, including availability of and access to data, vehicles and infrastructure, were some of the key points addressed at the 15th ITS European Congress in Lisbon. These were also brought to the table of discussions at the ITS Global Summit in Melbourne. We could showcase the tangible results of our work together with the American and Asia-Pacific communities. A core focus of the discussions covered the topics of CCAM, data, electrification, MaaS and the user perspective. These will also be important focal points for future developments at the ITS World Congress in Suzhou. The broadening of this scope and exchange of knowledge will also be brought to the table at the ITS World Congress held in Dubai next year.

The ERTICO team continue the journey of Inspiration

I believe that investing in people, talent and knowledge building holds a strong potential for further cementing the partnership. This allows the entire ERTICO team to continuously progress their expertise and thought leadership skills in order to work more closely with our Partners. This is also why we embark on part 2 of our HR “Inspire journey” focusing on our new Values.

Finally, a big shout out to my team, our Partners and other friends in the never-sleeping mobility world. Also, my sincere thanks to our Chairman, Dr Angelos Amditis and the members of the Supervisory Board and the Strategy Committee. They are a true guide and offer the necessary direction and strategic impetus. The team appreciates the good sync with our Partners.

The ERTICO team is very much looking forward to the coming months of many more fruitful cooperations and discussions with our Partners and stakeholders across the ITS ecosystem.

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Yours,

Joost