Are we doing the right research to meet European long-term goals for aviation and mobility? This was the main objective in the H2020-funded project CAMERA (Coordination and support Action for Mobility in Europe: Research and Assessment), coordinated by Innaxis. In this regard, the consortium relied on artificial intelligence (AI) and developed a prototype model to generate data-driven insights for policy- and decision-makers. 1 CAMERA’s approach utilised common Natural Language Processing techniques used for topic modelling and information retrieval. After the development and verification of the model, this digital assistant was applied to analyse textual data of over 40,000 H2020- and FP7-funded research projects taken from the CORDIS database. 2
As a result, 926 projects covering nine research topics were identified as mobility-relevant. The model uncovered the funding amounts under each programme, the total number of projects that predominantly deal with these topics, the geographical and institutional distribution, and much more. These descriptive results were matched with key performance indicators and areas (KPIs and KPAs), which proxied European mobility goals, to derive where research is on the right track and where additional investments and actions are still needed.
Overall, this digital AI-powered assistance helps to understand mobility research initiatives in an automated and data-driven way from a bird’s eye view. In today’s world of information overload, it can ease the cognitive load of human analysts and support decision-making. CAMERA’s results are available open-access as a data dashboard that allows everyone to visually inspect the model results and the database. 3
Derived from textual data: nine common research topics across mobility projects
Nine research topics were uncovered across all mobility-relevant EU projects, exhibiting the total number of projects that predominantly deal with a particular topic and hence indicate a specific research focus.
Explore the data yourself using the CAMERA data dashboard
The data dashboard is open-access and one of the main results of the CAMERA project [3]. It allows everyone to explore the data and conduct their own analysis.
Analysis and assessment of mobility and air transport research in Europe.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 769606. https://h2020camera.eu/