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Digitalisation and automation enabling new railway services for passengers and freight

European Comission

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Summary
13 September 2022
14 December 2022
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Overview

ExpectedOutcome :

The introduction of automation (automated functions) in the railway sector to be developed by the EU-RAIL programme and digitalization will bring new opportunities to improve the passenger and freight services: increasing capacity on the network, increasing the reliability of the overall system, increasing the punctuality, increasing operational flexibility, etc. are among the key improvements that will be brought into the system.

The project stemming from this topic is expected to identify what are the opportunities for new type of services that could be enabled by these new automated functions and in general the digitalization of the rail system and sub-systems and to consider their business case(s). The latter should take into account who will bear the costs and who will get the benefit, researching as well how those new type of services can increase the competitiveness of rail and model its potential evolution in the transport and mobility sector in the next decades.

The Project stemming from this topic is expected to provide all the following:

* + Definition of new business services (at least 4 new services) for both passenger and freight that can be enabled with the introduction of digital solutions in the rail sector and ecosystem, in particular with automated functions. These new services should take into account evolution of customers’ needs and expectations as well as innovations in other sectors.

* + Definition and analysis of high-level business cases associated to these new potential business services, highlighting the benefits gained for all the different actors involved in the value chain up until the final customer(s) as well as the possible additional costs to be borne by the sector.

* + A model on how modal split will evolve with the introduction of these new business services. This shall also take into account possible economic, political and societal evolutions which may impact the transport sector, and as a consequence, the needs of the customers. Scope :

The action to be funded under this topic is expected to provide a more innovative business orientation for the exploitation of the results from the Europe’s Rail programme related to digital solutions and in particular automated functions.

Digitalisation and automation in rail are expected to provide added value to the sector in terms of increased capacity and reliability or decrease of capital and operational costs. But other new type of business services could potentially be delivered to customers (both passenger and freight) and those needs to be researched and their potential to enhance the competitiveness and attractiveness of rail transport be analysed.

The action to be funded under this topic shall therefore find innovative type of business services that could be launched within the rail ecosystem using these new automated functions. It is important that applicants would “think out of the box”, trying to anticipate how the market innovation implementation would create the opportunity in the rail sector for innovative and ground-breaking type of services, like for example the digitalisation of mass communication through internet allowed the creation of innovative services, including in the transport domain as Uber. This is valid for all market segments and shall cover both passengers and freight. Associated business case analysis for each new potential services shall also be delivered in order to have a first assessment of costs and gains repartition.

Finally, the work shall also cover a model showing how the modal share of rail transport could evolve taking into account these innovative services and based on overall trends and forecast for the next decade.

Interactions with other EU-RAIL projects:

The System Pillar will deliver a new functional system architecture for the railway system, which will have an impact on the overall system design, the automation functions that are going to be developed, including their performance and their costs). The action to be funded under this topic shall take into consideration the work to be released by the System Pillar and its evolution.

Likewise, the action to be funded under this topic shall also take into account the work to be delivered by EU-RAIL Flagship Areas 1 & 2.

This action should also take into consideration the work to be carried out in projects to be funded under the work programme call HORIZON-CL5-2023-D6-01-07: Operational automation to support multimodal freight transport.

Gender dimension

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

Specific Topic Conditions :

Activities are expected to be of low TRL, with experiment verification of the formulated concepts at TRL3, higher TRL are possible – see General Annex B for a guide to the TRL definitions and criteria to be used.

Eligibility

General conditions

  1. Admissibility conditions: described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes

The page limit of the application is as follows:

Regarding admissibility conditions and related requirements, part A of the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2021-2022 General Annexes applies with the following exception: the limit for a full Innovation Action, Research Innovation Action and Coordination and Support Actions applications is set to 70 pages.

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System

  1. Eligible countries: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide .

3 . Other eligibility conditions: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

  1. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes

  2. Evaluation and award:

  • Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes

The award criteria included in the General Annexes of the Horizon Europe – Work Programme 2021 – 2022 are complemented with additional criteria as specified in Annex VIII to this Work Programme.

  • Submission and evaluation processes are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual

The granting authority can fund a maximum of one project.

  • Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes
  1. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes

Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum as defined in the Decision of 7 July 2021 authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025). [[This decision is available on the Funding and Tenders Portal, in the reference documents section for Horizon Europe, under ‘Simplified costs decisions’ or through this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/ls-decision_he_en.pdf]].

As specified in section 2.3.8.1 of the WP 2022, in order to facilitate the contribution to the achievement of the EU-Rail objectives, the options regarding 'linked actions' of the EU-Rail Model Grant Agreement and the provisions therein, is enabled in the corresponding EU-Rail Grant Agreements.

The action that is expected to be funded under this topic will be complementary to the actions expected to be funder under the topics:

  • HORIZON-ER-JU-2022-FA1-TT-01
  • HORIZON-ER-JU-FA2-01

Please note that the list is non-exhaustive as additional Linked Projects may follow at a later stage of the programme implementation to complement the activity.

The starting date of grants awarded under this topic may be as of the submission date of the application. Applicants must justify the need for a retroactive starting date in their application. Costs incurred from the starting date of the action may be considered eligible.

Specific conditions

  1. Specific conditions: described in the [specific topic of the Work Programme]

Applicant Private[[As defined in Article 2(5) of Council Regulation (EU) 2021/2085.]] Members of the EU-Rail part of consortia responding to this topic should provide in-kind contributions to additional activities to be declared via the template model available on the F&T portal. The amount of total in-kind contributions (i.e. in-kind contributions for operational activities and in-kind contributions for additional activities) should be no less than 1.263[[In order to support a leverage factor of no less than the ratio between the contribution from members other than the Union and the Union financial contribution, as on the basis of Articles 88 and 89 of Council Regulation (EU) 2021/2085.]] times the funding request, in aggregate, of these applicant Private Members. Any discrepancy shall be well and duly justified.

In this respect, the grant agreements will set, in principle, annual deliverable on in-kind contributions for the projects selected under this topic, as well as mandatory reporting requirements, for those applicants who are Private Members of EU-Rail.

Indicative project duration: 24 months. This does not preclude submission and selection of a proposal with a different project duration.

Special skills and/or capabilities expected from the Applicant(s)

Applicants shall ensure that their proposals and consortium reflect the aggregated expertise to perform the activities and achieve the objectives set by the topic.

The applicants are expected to gather expertise leveraging from the knowledge of the expectations and needs from clients (both passenger and freight). as well as knowledge from academia. In addition, applicants should leverage from the knowledge of academia as regards the trends and evolution, in the horizon 2030, considering the R&I contribution and vision from the EU-Rail Master Plan and Multi-Annual Work Plan.

Documents

Call documents:

Application form — call-specific application form is available in the Submission System from 13 September 2022

Evaluation form

Model Grant Agreement (ToMGA)

Europe's Rail -Work Programme 2022 - 2024

Europe's Rail - Master Plan

Europe's Rail - Multi Annual Work Programme

Additional documents:

HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 1. General Introduction

HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 13. General Annexes

HE Programme Guide

HE Framework Programme and Rules for Participation Regulation 2021/695

HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764

EU Financial Regulation

Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment

EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement

Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual

Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions

Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement

Questions & Answers Release 1: 27 September 2022

Questions & Answers Release 2: 06 October 2022

Questions & Answers Release 3: 14 October 2022

Questions & Answers Release 4: 25 October 2022

Questions & Answers Release 5: 3 November 2022

Questions & Answers Release 6: 17 November 2022

Questions & Answers Release 7: 23 November 2022

Questions & Answers Release 8: 2 December 2022

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20 April 2023