The transport sector plays a growing and catalytic role in a rapidly changing world where economic, political, social, and environmental objectives have to be met in order to ensure a consistently high level of welfare for society. Both in Europe and all over the world, transport affects our day-to-day life in many different ways. Our decisions are often influenced by the availability or the lack of transport alternatives and our travel behaviour depends on many inter-related factors.
There are many different aspects to the complex world of transport: transport infrastructure, vehicles and vessels, and the environment, to name but a few.
All of these aspects have been the subject of extensive studies and research conducted by universities, research institutes, practitioners, and authorities in a variety of different disciplines. However, there is still a lot to explore and learn.
The Transport Research Arena (TRA) 2012, which is due to be held in Athens in 2012, serves exactly this purpose, namely to enable the exchange of knowledge among those who play an active role in the transport sector and to promote the
dissemination of research findings, best practice, and application techniques that have been successfully implemented in some parts of the world. At the same time, it provides experts from different disciplines with a forum for creative
discussions about the future of transport at a location where Greek philosophers debated the burning issues of the day some 25 centuries ago.
TRA 2012 will focus on all aspects of all surface transport modes with the exception of overseas shipping. It is supported by the main transport industry stakeholders in Europe: the Conference of European Directors of Roads (CEDR),
the European Commission (EC), the European Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC), the European Rail Research Advisory Council (ERRAC), and the European Technology Platform Waterborne (WATERBORNE). TRA 2012 seeks to reflect the multidisciplinary nature of the transport sector and, for this reason, addresses all stakeholders in both the public and private sectors and all professionals, regardless of their roles (researchers, practitioners, designers, constructors, operators, administrators etc.). The main theme of TRA 2012 is Sustainable mobility through innovation.
To achieve its goals, TRA 2012 is organised into 5 different session types:
• plenary sessions, where keynote speeches will address some of the most important issues in the transport sector and the transport sector’s role in future society;
• strategic sessions, where experts and well-known scientists from different fields will speak about many of the most topical transport issues;
• technical sessions, where experts will address one or more of the technical topics chosen for this conference;
• poster sessions, where experts will present on posters one or more of the topics chosen for this conference; and
• special workshop sessions, where issues of special interest in the transport sector are promoted.
Furthermore, TRA 2012 will repeat the successful young researchers’ competition, the well-known YEAR (Young European Arena of Research). The purpose of this competition is to motivate and encourage young researchers from all European states by providing them a European platform for their ideas and research work for the benefit of greener, safer, and smarter surface transport for Europe.
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