A consortium consisting of Vias institute (Belgium) and SWOV (The Netherlands) will update the European Road Safety Observatory ERSO per 1 February. Vias is the lead institution, but the work will be shared fairly evenly across the two partners.
The European Road Safety Observatory (ERSO) gathers harmonised specialist information on road safety practices and policy in European countries. Evidenced-based approaches lie at the heart of the most successful road safety polices – backed up by accident and other road safety data. ERSO collects a range of information types. These include a series of data protocols and collection methodologies, national and in-depth accident data, exposure data and safety performance indicators. The framework addresses emerging challenges (such as an ageing population, growing urbanisation, the sharing economy) and the safe transition to cooperative, connected and autonomous mobility. The website’s content was developed by the SafetyNet project and was later updated and expanded by the DaCoTA project.
Within the three years life time of the project following will be produced:
- a report reviewing the current ERSO structure and reports;
- monitoring reports on road safety performance in the EU
- 3 annual reports with information about fatalities and injuries per country
- 32 road safety country profiles
- 18 annual factsheets (six per year) on specific road safety topics
- 22 qualitative reports reviewing and synthesizing the most recent research in a range of topics
Furthermore the continuity and consistency with current information will be ensured by applying the well-established approaches and methods as developed in projects such as SafetyNet, DaCoTA, SafetyCube and ESRA and involving many of the experts that have contributed in these projects and have developed the methods.
Explicit attention will be paid to the accessibility, comprehensibility and usefulness of the information for EU and national road safety professionals. The latest developments in research on data visualization and analysis will be incorporated, as well as software development in these domains.
The consortium will work in close consultation with on the one hand DG MOVE, the CARE Expert Group and the High Level Group, and other hand the consortium’s extensive European network of road safety experts whenever useful. Strict quality assurance and appropriate risk management procedures will be applied to ensure a high scientific standard and prompt delivery.
