MOSCOW, Dec. 9 - The SIMBA II project aims to increase RTD cooperation between the EU and its international cooperation partners: Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa. In order to realize this objective, SIMBA II organizes a number of expert working group meetings, the latest two of which were held on November 18, 2009 in Moscow, Russia, and November 25, 2009 in São Paulo, Brazil.

The workshop in Russia was organized during the First Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, in conjunction with ITS Russia and PAIRP (The Professional Association in vehicle Risk Prevention), and was attended by ERTICO Partners Egis Mobilité, Kapsch TrafficCom and Satellic.

Vincent Blervaque, Director of Development and Deployment at ERTICO, welcomed the participants warmly. "SIMBA II is a first step in the international cooperation roadmap. European partners have shown a lot of interest in cooperation with Russia, and the EC has high expectations regarding future project development".

The workshop highlighted three aspects of EU-Russian cooperation above all.

Firstly, ITS awareness and education can be usefully increased in Russia. The ITS World Congress organized last September was given as an example as the theme was "ITS in daily life" thus demonstrating how ITS can be successfully deployed. In the case of the EU, the ITS Action Plan is a major success since it brings together stakeholders from different fields, raises awareness and interest, and speeds up market penetration of mature ITS applications and services in Europe.

Secondly, recent developments in eCall and the Russian ERA/GLONASS project were of great interest, and future cooperation was discussed, and the issue will be raised at the next eCall Implementation Platform meeting.

Thirdly, the growing challenge of urban mobility was fruitfully addressed, both in general terms and also with special regard to the upcoming Sochi Winter Olympic Games 2014, where there is great Russian interest in applying ITS solutions. In these aspects the experience from the STADIUM and VIAJEO projects, the two follow-ons to SIMBA II, would be very useful.

eCall was one of the topics covered during the subsequent press conference and how the EU and Russia could synchronize the deployment of eCall. Regarding international cooperation Gerald Conover, Advisor of ITS America, underlined "The addition of ITS Russia to the two decade partnership of ITS America, ITS Japan, and ERTICO - ITS Europe allows the creation of specific projects and the development of ITS on a global level".

For further information and the full article, please click here.

First Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety

Egis Mobilité

Kapsch

ITS World Congress

ITS Action Plan

eCall

eCall Toolbox

eCall Implementation Platform

VIAJEO