Ben@Rail will represent the bridge between Work Area 1 “Socio-economics and System Platform Demonstrators” and Work Area 2 “Key Performance Indicators”. The project will be characterised by a holistic approach to the rail system overarching objectives of enlarging the knowledge of success factors for the future railway system based on customer needs and users’ mobility behaviour, and developing a methodology for assessing the achievements of the Shift2Rail objectives.
The key elements to reach these results rely on the identification of rail stakeholders’ and users’ requirements and needs, as well as on the development of a methodology able to assess the effects of Shift2Rail-funded activities on these requirements and needs. The development of Ben@Rail will be performed building on call for members project (CFM) IMPACT-2, so to include in the analysis the socio-economic impact of Shift2Rail.
The main objective of Ben@Rail is to strengthen the effectiveness of EU-funded R&I activities in the railway research domain amongst the rail sector stakeholders, in order to ensure a tight adherence of the innovations stemming from Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking and its Master Plan to the needs of railway stakeholders and final users.
To support this objective, Ben@Rail aims at developing a top-down analysis of the railway stakeholders’ masterplan goals, stemming from two areas. The analysis will indicate whether the technological and general concepts that are supposed to be developed by Europe’s Rail-funded projects meet the stakeholders’ expectations.
The main objective of Ben@Rail is supported by five specific objectives:
- To identify the requirements of the railway sector stakeholders vis a vis EU-funded research;
- To review, analyse and support Europe’s Rail JU Master Plan in light of the stakeholders’ expected benefits and wider societal challenges;
- To collect, analyse, and elaborate available data from rail R&I activities to measure the EU funding programmes levels of efficacy in responding to European societal issues;
- To apply a scientifically proved methodology to assess the effects of R&I activities on the stakeholders’ expectations;
- To communicate and promote the outcome of the analysis to the scientific community, rail stakeholders and policymakers in the new framework of Europe’s Rail Master Plan.
Ben@Rail intends to
quantify the efficacy of EU-funded R&I activities, providing evidence-based research to assess the extent to which the foreseen technological and operational innovations resulting from the work of Shift2Rail, and expected from its future successor, respond to a clear societal case and produce benefits to the railway stakeholders and users.