To achieve carbon reduction targets as we move increasingly away from the use of fossil fuels, the infrastructure of electricity generation and transport will change as wind generation and electric vehicles become more important. Both of these require very specific materials, the so-called E-tech elements, and the ability of the mining industry to supply these is a matter of strategic significance. The provision of new technology on the required scale carries a significant risk of failure to secure materials needed to deliver the politically-agreed targets. Our proposal sets out to develop a generic approach to understanding and modelling the supply chain through Material Flow Analysis, uniquely adding a geological component with associated spatial visualisation and uncertainty. We will use standard methodology (ISO 14041), which is part of the ISO 14001 family; and these management systems are familiar to stakeholders. We add to these layers descriptions of geological (and so geographical) distribution of sources of selected E-tech elements, following through to consider the implications of space (geographical location) and time (including lead times from exploration through mining to product) at all stages of the supply chain. Using this approach, we will produce a tool that enables users to understand where bottlenecks arise in the supply chain, informing decisions that relate to resource use that include end-of-life recovery of these elements and providing constraints that inform policy makers. Our proposal involves close liaison with key representatives of non-academic users of E-tech elements.

ICT4CART, totally aligned with the work programme, is providing an ICT infrastructure to enable the transition towards road transport automation. To meet this high level objective ICT4CART is bringing together, adapting and improving technological advances from different industries, mainly telecom, automotive and IT. It adopts a hybrid communication approach where all the major wireless technologies, i.e. cellular, ITS G5 and LTE-V, are integrated under a flexible “sliced” network architecture. This architecture will ensure performance and resilience for different groups of applications according to the needs of higher levels of automation (L3 & L4). On top of that, a distributed IT environment for data aggregation and analytics will be implemented. This offers seamless integration and exchange of data and services between all the different actors, allowing 3rd parties to develop, deliver and provide innovative services, thus creating new business opportunities. Cyber-security and data privacy aspects will be duly considered throughout the whole ICT infrastructure. In addition, novel accurate localisation services, exploiting the cellular network and information from other sources, such as on-board sensors, especially in complex areas (e.g. urban), will be addressed. Standardisation and interoperability are of high interest within ICT4CART in order to ensure the impact of the project towards enabling the transition to higher levels of automation. In this context issues related to the frequency spectrum will be investigated, while through the organisation of relevant workshops the engagement of policy makers and public authorities is ensured. To achieve its objectives ICT4CART, instead of working in generic solutions with questionable impact, it builds on four specific high-value use cases (urban and highway) which will be demonstrated and validated under real-life conditions at the test sites in Austria, Germany, Italy and across the Italian-Austrian border.