The success of Galileo will largely depend on its uptake in LBS and IoT markets. Leveraging on Galileo’s features that improve performance in urban environment, FLAMINGO will unleash GNSS mass-market potential. The overarching objectives of FLAMINGO are to develop and deliver high accuracy and reliable positioning and navigation services for mass market uptake, to demonstrate the potential by developing and showcasing ready to market applications on both Smartphone and IoT devices within major European cities, and to foster a new community of E-GNSS consumers and applications. FLAMINGO shall produce a service targeting accuracies of 50cm (95%) and better, employing multi-constellation, PPP and RTK mechanisms, power consumption optimisation techniques as well as the GNSS raw measurements availability. FLAMINGO will deliver hardware and software that utilise the service to its full potential. Technology triggers for mobile devices are provided by Google through the provision of the GNSS raw measurements API that provide access to pseudorange and carrier phase (a prerequisite for the highest order accuracy GNSS positioning) and by various commercial smartphone manufacturers who support these measurements. IoT devices currently provided by three of the consortium partners will be modified, enhanced, and made available for the validation activities. The project will develop and deliver a series of market-ready Galileo enabled IoT and commercial LBS applications in three urban areas that support European ambitions on Smart Cities namely Barcelona (ES), Toulouse (F) and the Gdansk/ Gdynia/Sopot Tricity (PL). In addition the E-GNSS user base and markets will be stimulated through a tiered FLAMINGO Hackathon process which will bring together a mixed community of E-GNSS users, consumers, application developers, GIS and data scientists. FLAMINGO involves nine leading organisations who specialise in location technology, including five SMEs.

The significance of migration as a social, political and broader public concern has intensified significantly. Migration is increasingly seen as a high-priority policy issue by many governments, politicians and throughout the world. As well as migration projections and scenarios that are essential for appropriate planning and effective policymaking, a deeper understanding of the root causes and drivers of migration and of their interrelation with people’s propensity to migrate is needed. Enhancing migration data is a crucial step to advance migration governance since better data is needed in order to accomplish sustainable social and economic development and national migrant data strategies are required to inform good policies. The project’s overall objective is to improve understandings of changing nature of migration flows and the drivers of migration, to analyse patterns, motivations and new geographies. Moreover, HumMingBird aims to calculate population estimates and determine emerging trends and future trends and accordingly to identify possible future implications of today’s policy decisions. Correspondingly, migration scenarios will be developed in a more forward looking manner that takes into account both quantitative and qualitative perspectives of different migration actors that might have an impact people’s decisions to migrate and consequent trends that will have an impact on our societies. Global scenarios will base on not only a realistic understanding of the drivers and dynamics of migration but also on the effects and effectiveness of past migration policies. Projects ambitions are to identify the uncertainties and reappraise, to explore the reasons why migration predictions may not hold and to demonstrate non-traditional data sources for migration research.

SIA has the objective of developing 4 ready-to-use new services (iWheelMon, iRailMon, iPantMon and iCatMon) to provide prognostic information about the health status of the railway’s most demanding assets in terms of maintenance costs (wheel, rail, pantograph and catenary). These new services will help to reduce the 15% of railway maintenance costs, 25% of maintenance unscheduled events and 15% of derailments associated to the rail-wheel interface. These new end-to-end services are supported by a system that will adapt and integrate existing products (TR9) and technologies (TRL5-TRL7) as STEREO®, WINDSepe® and ERSAT_CPS® among others, brought by the consortium. The features of the services rely on an accurate and available positioning that will be achieved thanks to the distinguished characteristics for the railway environment of the EGNOS and Galileo multi-frequency multi-constellation signals (e.g. E5 wideband signal with Altboc modulation has high code range precision through reduced code noise and multipath). SIA will build on existing EGNSS based pilot projects such as H2020-ERSAT EAV and H2020-FR8RAIL within the context of Shift2Rail. SIA will also build on standards and best practice guides (e.g. GEGN8578, IEC613735-2-6, RailTopoModel among others), which will foster EGNSS adoption in the railway environment. Complementary, and with the same importance level to the technical development, SIA has the objective of paving the way for the market uptake of the new services. With this regard, 4 pilot projects has been planned to validate the performance of the new services in fully operational scenarios and to be used as a commercial platform for potential end-users. The preliminary business plans reveals a very promising business potential with a ROI of 126%, an accumulated turn-over of 34M€ in 5 years and acquired income rights of another 58M€ for the 5th year. Three high-tech SMEs are leading the project representing approximately 40% of the project effort.

With the NAVIS Centre in Hanoi, the BELS initiative was able to place a foothold for EU GNSS applications in South East Asia, widely opening international relationships for GNSS solution markets to EU companies. Founded in 2010 the NAVIS Centre serves as entry point for EU companies. Next step to go is the implementation of a fully embedded GNSS NAVIS Demo Centre. It builds upon the broad engagement of companies, researchers and stakeholders during BELS and aims at attracting further EU companies. The Centre will serve as a platform to demonstrate the full value chain of EU GNSS companies; from hardware to software, as well as services and maintenance: BELS+ will support the acquisition of EU demo companies and prepare a local infrastructure for placement of EU GNSS devices to raise awareness for the European GNSS expertise. This process will be supported by promotion activities to EU companies, within EU clusters and at conferences. In teaming up with the bi-annual “European Space Solutions (ESS)” Conference a “European Asian Space Solutions” twin will be launched comprising local SEA events as well as SEA contributions to the ESS. BELS+ includes EGNSS days in SEA as well as Demo Workshops in SEA. Moreover, it will contribute to match companies with well trained professionals as well as it will provide EGNSS trainings for professionals in the EU and SEA and thus enhancing GNSS capacity building. Communication of project progress and outcomes, also to the political EU-ASEAN frame, will accompany the work of a highly qualified & balanced consortium of bundled EU and SEA GNSS support, technical and market expertise aiming at further continuing EGNSS collaboration across continents.

X2RAIL-2 represents the 2nd proposal of the Shift2Rail members in the IP2 “Advanced Traffic Management & Control Systems” domain. The pillar (IP2) challenge is to increase functionalities of the existing signalling and automation systems and related design and validation processes providing a more competitive, flexible, real-time, intelligent traffic management and decision support system, and maintaining backward compatibility to the existing European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) and especially its European Train Control System component (ETCS). The X2RAIL-2 project aims, according to the MAAP, to research and develop four selected key technologies to foster innovations in the field of railway signaling and automation systems within the following Technology Demonstrators (TDs): Fail-Safe Train Positioning (TD2.4) - To achieve a significant reduction of the use of traditional train detection systems by means of the attainment of an absolute and safe train positioning system based on a multi-sensor concept, where GNSS is the preferred technology. On-Board Train Integrity (TD2.5) - To achieve the safe On-board Train Integrity to allow the application of new signaling train separation concepts (e.g. Moving Block or Virtual Block) based on the train self -localization rather than on traditional train detection systems. Formal Methods (TD2.7) - To innovate and standardise processes and interfaces in the evolution phases of a signaling project (e.g.: design, implementation, test & commissioning, operation & maintenance) to rationalize the approach and to reduce time-to-market costs. Traffic Management Evolution (TD2.9) - To improve standardisation and integration of Traffic Management processes with the aim to achieve flexibility and scalability within the choice of functional service module managed by TMS. The X2RAIL-2 project aims at reaching TRL5/6 demonstrators.