Market Impact Evaluation – the Way to Judge the Success of Completed Rail Research

The European Rail Research Advisory Council (ERRAC) was set up in 2001 with the goal of helping to revitalise the European rail sector by making it more competitive, fostering increased innovation and guiding research efforts at the European level. The ERRAC Project Evaluation Working Group (EWG) determines the market impact of previous rail research to improve use of research funding and to ensure a strategic approach to the prioritisation of rail research. Individual projects are evaluated after they have been completed to ensure successful dissemination of project results in order to ensure that the results of previous rail research can be taken into account for future projects and avoid weak market uptake of results by learning the lessons of previous research.The EWG provides intelligence based on the project evaluations for input into future European Framework Programmes. ERRAC EWG has evaluated over 50 finished projects from the ERRAC database which has details of all Rail-related past and current rail research funded by the European Commission. A methodology has been developed to evaluate the market impact of projects and assess the contribution of evaluated projects to the ERRAC ROADMAPS and Strategic Rail Research Agenda (SRRA) goals. This information provides inputs to EC Project officers during the negotiation phase and during the course of the projects for project review.EWG has evaluated successfully finished rail research projects in order to analyse the success/failure factors related to actual market uptake and determine market uptake from an industry perspective in order to determine the return on research investment. This coordination activity helps to provide ideas for new European and national projects with a real potential for implementation and therefore a significant market uptake. The ERRAC EWG has developed the database to provide rapid access to information on results of rail research projects, deliverables etc., as well as lessons learnt and possible contributions to the attainment of the goals of the Rail Vision 2020 in coherence with SRRA and in the future RAIL VISION 2050