UVARBox followed the invitation of the European Commission to present our project at their stand during the ITS World Congress, which took place from 11-15 October in Hamburg, Germany. Even though more than 100 exhibition stands and sessions offered a very diverse portfolio of information activities, UVARBox was able to draw a crowd of interested stakeholders to the presentation area of the Commission.

After some short introductory remarks from Edoardo Felici (European Commission), who highlighted the importance of the digitisation efforts by UVARBox, Pedro Barradas (ARMIS) introduced our project. As coordinator of UVARBox, he summarised the currently existing problems, which are caused by a lack of digital UVAR information. UVARBox will solve many of these challenges and lays the ground for ‘UVARExchange’, our follow-up project, which will coordinate data exchange between EU Member States.

Furthermore, Martin Böhm (Austriatech) the importance of the National Access Points (NAPs) and the local experts that coordinate the digitisation efforts on the national level. ‘Those local coordinators are the backbone that guarantee success of the shared efforts, as every country has a different legal and political framework and varying levels of digitised data’ emphasised Böhm. Additionally, he emphasised that the common UVARBox strategy will guarantee that the developed tools will have an excellent legacy on the national and local level.

Suzanne Hoadley (Polis Network) concluded the keynote by accentuating the significance of the UVARBox process in the larger framework of UVARs and their increasing use across Europe. She invited everyone to engage with the project partners to support the cause and help the involved cities in the respective UVARBox countries of Germany, BeNeLux, Austria and Italy.