The second EuroRAP’s Lunchtime seminar took place on 7 December 2021 and highlighted the research and innovation hot topic AiRAP. The seminar attracted 107 registrations from 41 different countries from all over the world. The topic of AiRAP was presented by Monica Olyslagers, Global Innovation Manager and Cities Specialist at International Road Assessment Programme’s (iRAP).

Monica first gave a snapshot of iRAP’s global activities and then focused on a new iRAP initiative called AiRAP. She explained that big data and artificial intelligence can play a lead role in building the social and economic business case for safer roads and creating the scale of change needed to save millions of lives. The accelerated and intelligent collection and coding of road attribute data has the potential to reduce the time and effort required to undertake road safety assessments, reduce the costs and improve accuracy. Together with the road safety Star Ratings and fatality and serious injury estimation models, iRAP’s AiRAP initiative has the potential to put this road safety data at the fingertips of road authorities, policymakers, investors and road users worldwide.

“Data is seen as one of the critical things to solve the road safety burden. With AiRAP not only will data come from different sources but will also vary in how it is collected and converted for road safety assessments”, Monica pointed out during the seminar. To support this initiative, iRAP has introduced a new AiRAP accreditation to ensure the quality, consistency and standardization of the data.

Monica presented also two AiRAP documents which will be approved and available shortly: Process for AiRAP attribute accreditation and AiRAP Data specification. The presentation was wrapped up with the AiRAP vision, followed by many interesting questions from the audience. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to us by email at icanhelp@eurorap.org or directly to Monica on monica.olyslagers@irap.org.

The recording of the EuroRAP Lunchtime seminar #2 is available HERE (see the Chapter markers for Introduction, Monica’s presentation on AiRAP, Q&A). The PPT is available HERE.

Our next online seminar on 11th January 2022 at 1 pm CET is a national scheme spotlight event. Jure Kostanjšek, Secretary-General of the Automobile and Motorcycle Association of Slovenia (AMZS), and Klemen Filipič, accredited iRAP engineer at AMZS, will present the EuroRAP programme in Slovenia: a success story 2008–2021. Register HERE. We look forward to seeing you there.

EuroRAP’s Lunchtime seminar series provides information about the EuroRAP protocols through the ‘RAP basics’ online seminars, insight into iRAP research and innovation through our ‘Hot topic’ seminars, and inspiration for EuroRAP programmes through our ‘National schemes spotlight’ seminars. Along with a national schemes’ forum, these three seminar types will be presented in rotation giving us food for thought every month. The virtual seminar series is aimed at all EuroRAP partners and other interested parties – from automobile clubs to road authorities, to researchers.