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HUMANIST: European Union cooperation in a Network of Excellence

SWOV will participate in the HUMANIST Network of Excellence (NoE), which is part of the 6th framework programme "Information Society Technologies". The goal of NoE is to gather knowledge and to promote cooperation between research institutes within the EU. HUMANIST is aimed at telematics in traffic.

 

Although knowledge of research into human limitations and abilities, and of cognitive psychology is present in the EU, it is spread among a large number of EU country institutes and there is hardly any structural cooperation. In order to change this, a Network of Excellence was recently set up. The NoE wants to bring together the most important EU research institutes in the study of the possibilities of promoting road safety by means of research of human centred design (i.e. the human as central figure) in the field of telematics and road traffic. This cooperation strives to achieve exchange among researchers, joint projects, and the use of each other's research facilities.

 

Telematics

The expectation is that telematics applications along the roadside (e.g. flexible speed limits that take temporary circumstances into consideration) and telematics applications that aid the driver (e.g. route navigation) can play an important role in regulating mobility and the improvement of road safety.

For this, it is essential that the telematics applications are designed in such a way that they fit the abilities and limitations of the road user. Furthermore, they will only be used when they are experienced as being useful. Apart from this, it is not to be expected that all effects of an application will be positive. In these cases, any damaging side effects will have to be discovered in time. This means that the various telematics applications will have to be studied from the points of view of many disciplines and approaches. In this, the contribution of research of human limitations and abilities, and of the cognitive psychology is indispensable.

The expectation is that the NoE activities will have the following results:

Apart from the mutual cooperation, it is an important task of the network to spread knowledge to individuals and organizations that will use the knowledge in applications. This means that courses will be offered, but also that active contacts will be sought with organizations such as the European car manufacturing industry and the organizations that work on normalization and standardization.

 

Participation

Within the HUMANIST project research will be carried out in 7 areas. SWOV participates in this research in the fields of:

Because the exchange and making available of knowledge is the central issue in a NoE, the first results can be expected after 6 months.

 

The Network of Excellence Humanist will start on 1 March 2004 and will continue until 29 February 2008.

SWOV Research Activities 24 - December 2003

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