Webinar “Clean vehicles and innovative technologies in sustainable transport planning”

At this year’s second webinar of network CIVINET Slovenia-Croatia-South East Europe, held on May 19, 2021, organized by ODRAZ as the secretariat of the CIVINET Slovenia-Croatia-SEE network, about 60 participants had the opportunity to learn more about green hydrogen, electric cars, electric buses in public transport, autonomous vehicles, smart traffic management systems and intelligent transport systems. 

Ankica Kovač from the Zagreb Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture spoke at a webinar about the potential of hydrogen technologies in the energy transition with a focus on the transport sector. In her presentation, she concluded that based on trends, goals and visions for Korea, Japan, China, Europe, California as well as the Hydrogen Council’s global vision for 2050, hydrogen and fuel cells have strong potential to play a crucial role for sustainable mobility.

The topic of road traffic electrification with a focus on decarbonization of traffic was presented by Vedran Kirinčić from the Technical Faculty in Rijeka.

Aleš Klinc from the Maribor City Administration, whose city council adopted the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan of the City of Maribor in 2015, presented the experiences of using electric buses in public transport in the City of Maribor and the development of electromobility in the city.

Thomas Piribauer from Prisma Solutions presented Digibus, Austria’s leading project for autonomous vehicles in public transport, which aimed to research and test methods, technologies and models to verify the reliable and secure traffic management of automated shuttles as part of an intermodal regional mobility system.

Pero Škorput from the Department of Intelligent Transport Systems at the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences in Zagreb spoke about autonomous vehicles and centralized traffic management systems. In his presentation, he emphasized that the development of a networked and cooperative transport system places new demands on experts and scientists who study, create, develop, implement and maintain transport systems and transport infrastructure. It is necessary to achieve a higher level of interactivity and interoperability of transport systems. Removing barriers in terms of fragmentation and isolation of traffic-relevant information and knowledge in the problem domain is required as a “condicio sine qua non” for the establishment of autonomous driving and central traffic management systems. The future development of the transport system and the upgrade of the existing transport infrastructure according to the ITS development methodology are the only alternative in the establishment of an infrastructure platform for central traffic management and autonomous driving.

Plans for the development of intelligent transport systems in Serbia were presented by Vuk Bogdanović from the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad. In his presentation, he presented the development of the National Transport Strategy, whose primary goal is to prepare a new coherent national multimodal transport strategy and action plan to guide the sustainable development of the transport sector for the period 2022-2030, which will improve transport services, attract new investment to the poorer regions, improve the quality of life, encourage innovation, promote trade and contribute to improving relations with neighboring countries.