The IVORY project consortium successfully held its Mid-Term Conference, titled “AI for Vision Zero in Road Safety”, on 15 April 2025 in Athens, Greece.
Hosted by the National Technical University of Athens, the conference explored the latest advances in AI applications for road safety, aligned with the EU Vision Zero strategy.
🔍 Conference Overview:
The IVORY Mid-Term Conference featured research presentations by IVORY doctoral researchers on:
- Responsible and ethical AI for road safety,
- AI for driver safety,
- AI for proactive infrastructure safety management
It also included keynote lectures by internationally recognised experts in AI and road safety, and a round-table discussion reflecting on future challenges and opportunities.
🎤 Opening Session & DCs’ Three Minute Pitch:
The conference opened with an introduction to IVORY by Dr. Eleonora Papadimitriou. This was followed by 3-minute pitch presentations from all IVORY doctoral candidates, providing a concise overview of their research topics and contributions.
🎥 Watch the presentations: [DC1] [DC3] [DC5] [DC6] [DC7] [DC8] [DC9] [DC10] [DC11] [DC13][DC14]
🛣️ Session 1: AI and Road Infrastructure Safety
The first session focused on AI applications in infrastructure safety and included a keynote lecture by Dr. Simon Washington titled “Improving Road Safety with AI – Harnessing AI Innovation to Reduce Fatalities and Serious Injuries ”. The session continued with presentations from IVORY doctoral candidates in Work Package 6 (WP6), focusing on:
- Automated infrastructure assessment (Porto, J.A., Shahid, M., Ziakopoulos, A., Lopez, D.F., Bradford, J., Yannis, G., Ševrović, M.)
- Subjective Safety and Routing (Agarwal, A., Janssens, D., Bellemans, T.)
- From Infrastructure to Behaviour: Learning Risk Patterns from Telematics (Paradiso, S., Porto, J.A., Ziakopoulos, A., Sideris, H., Avgeros, J., Forstakis, P., Yannis, G.)
- Safety Beyond Crashes: Tracking Conflicts and Infrastructure Optimisation (Altuntas, G., Jabeen, N., Brijs, T., Ectors, W., Jacobs, T., Pirdavani, A., Polders, E.)
The second session explored the intersection of AI and policy-making, and the third session addressed driver behaviour and human factors.
🗣️ Round Table: Messages for the Future
The conference concluded with a round-table discussion involving leading experts in road safety, including Dr. Simon Washington, Prof. George Yannis, Prof. Marco Dozza, Prof. Tom Brijs, and Dr. Amir Pooyan Afghari. The discussion focused on future directions for AI in road safety, highlighting the importance of ethical AI deployment, data-driven decision making, and cross-section collaboration.
About IVORY Project
IVORY – ‘AI for Vision Zero in Road Safety’ is an industrial doctorates network, aiming to develop a new framework for the integration of AI in road safety and create a new generation of leading researchers in the field, in order to address the UN Sustainable Development Goals target 3.6 (halving the number of traffic fatalities by 2030) and EC ‘Vision Zero’ strategy (eliminating traffic fatalities by 2050). IVORY consists of 4 academic and 8 non-academic beneficiaries, as well as 8 associated partners, joining from engineering, data science and ethics of technology disciplines from 10 countries. It will train 15 researchers on new responsible AI applications for road user assistance and infrastructure safety management, and will create a sustainable learning and networking platform.