On 12th and 13th of November 2024, the Centre for Research & Technology Hellas/ Hellenic Institute of Transport (CERTH/HIT) hosted the kick-off meeting of TERRAIN project – ‘Twinning and Engagement in net-zero tRanport tRAnsItioN’, funded by the European Union through the Interreg IPA ADRION Programme 2021 - 2027.
CERTH/HIT is the horizontal mentor and coordinator of the project while the rest partners come from 9 countries of the Adriatic-Ionian Region. The project aims to facilitate cities of the specific Macro-Region to achieve the vision of smart urban mobility with zero emissions. The activities of the project are structured around the development of local living labs that will co-design the future of urban transport.
After welcoming the representatives from the partners’ organizations (Municipality of Berane - Montenegro, City of Skopje - North Macedonia, Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana Urban Region - Slovenia, Municipality of Bologna - Italy, University of Zagreb/Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences - Croatia, Regional Development Agency South Banat - Serbia, Municipality of Ioannina - Greece, Ministry of Traffic of Canton Sarajevo - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Durrës Municipality - Albania) and referring to its role as an ambassador of sustainable mobility, CERTH/HIT continued with the presentation of project’s structure, the goal of the technical work packages, and the expected outputs of TERRAIN project.
Subsequently, the project partners were invited to present their organizations, their needs in relation to sustainable urban mobility, their role in the TERRAIN project, their plans about pilot actions, and the expected benefits for their regions.
After that, a detailed description of project actions, partners’ obligations and needs related to communication, dissemination and capitalization activities took place.
During the first day of the meeting, Ms. Koralia Branioti, communication officer at Interreg IPA ADRION JS, guided the partnership on effective communication of actions and results.
The second day of the meeting was dedicated to presenting CERTH/HIT’s research results that can serve as core material for the further design and development of the TERRAIN actions. Among these were the added value of Thessaloniki Smart Mobility Living Lab, the process of developing a mobility living lab based on MOVE21 project ‘Multimodal and Interconnected Hubs for Freight and Passenger Transport Contributing to a Zero Emission 21st Century’ (Horizon 2020) outputs, and the exploitation of marketing techniques and methods in sustainable mobility co-planning from the e-smartec project ‘enhanced sustainable mobility with marketing techniques’ (Interreg Europe).
