The SYNCHROMODE partners gathered in Barcelona for a 2-day meeting of productive discussions about the project’s progress and next steps.
This General Assembly was held in Castelldefels, close to Barcelona, on 28 & 29 May 2025.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS:
The General Assembly began with valuable insights on project management from Dimitris Tzanis (CERTH), the project coordinator. His presentation covered a range of topics including administrative matters, coordination, innovation management, data management, and ethics.
The day then focused on the integration and testing of the SYNCHROMODE solutions within the case studies. We received updates from the teams in Madrid, Thessaloniki, and South Holland, who shared the status of their tasks and deliverables, current challenges, and next steps.
South Holland provided an interesting overview of their plans to manage traffic during sunny days near Keukenhof. Madrid discussed some of the difficulties they are experiencing with data provision and the alternative solutions they are exploring. Finally, Thessaloniki conducted a live demonstration of the toolbox, sharing their screens to show how traffic can be monitored across different trajectories and specific time slots.
In the afternoon, project partners YUNEX, VMZ, and CERTH provided more details on the lessons learned and progress made regarding the implementation and testing of SYNCHROMODE solutions. Various components of the system were tested within different modules, taking into account their impacts on key factors such as user acceptance, safety, and KPIs.
CERTH elaborated on the impact assessment approach, explaining how data collected during the execution phase will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the toolbox. The SYNCHROMODE toolbox is expected to contribute to important goals such as improving road safety, reducing traffic congestion and pollutant emissions, shortening journey times, and encouraging policymaker engagement. Each of these anticipated impacts will be assessed across social, economic, and environmental KPIs.
An engaging discussion emerged around how to define and measure these impacts in each case study. For example, partners explored ways to calculate public transport occupancy rates and interpret their relevance within the broader evaluation framework. Clearly, this represents an additional challenge for the SYNCHROMODE team!
Day 1 concluded with a pleasant seaside dinner, offering partners the opportunity to network and exchange ideas in a more informal setting.
On the second day, we began with a presentation by PNO on business modelling and exploitation strategy. The discussion focused on the commercial potential of SYNCHROMODE services and how to bridge the gap between research outcomes and real market conditions. A first workshop on the exploitation strategy is already planned for September 2025!
This was followed by a presentation from RUPPRECHT on Work Package 2 (WP2), which focused on user needs, system requirements, governance structures, cooperation models, and decision-making frameworks. Building on the results from the case studies and the impact assessment, a further analysis of governance and cooperation models will be conducted.
NOMMON then presented the current status of data gathering, fusion, and analysis. This was followed by UCL’s session on modelling, simulation, and the prediction of multimodal transport solutions.
After lunch, UCL continued with a presentation on predicting disruptions and traffic conditions. Accurate traffic state prediction is crucial for effective traffic flow management, especially during peak hours or in the event of accidents. For this purpose, a dedicated predictive model has been developed.
Finally, DEUSTO presented the transport network optimization tasks, along with the design of optimization methods across the different modules. A first prototype has already been developed for most categories of optimization problems. Testing scenarios for preliminary results will be implemented in three carefully selected villages in the southwest region of Madrid. DEUSTO showcased comparisons between baseline scenarios and optimized schedules, clearly highlighting the improvements.
The second day concluded with a Steering Committee meeting involving CERTH, DEUSTO, YUNEX, PZH, and UCL.
A special thank you to AIMSUN for hosting and organizing this successful gathering! We are already looking forward to the next meeting and to continuing our collective efforts toward smarter, more integrated traffic management solutions.
