Workshop Session C: Future Transport Education

TUCTE17

Facilitator: Wouter Van den Berghe, Belgian Road Safety Institute, SKILLFUL

The general purpose of the workshop was to offer an general overview of the Skillful project and, in particular, of its two major pillars, namely

(1) the identification of the future job skills and competences in the transport sector

(2) the identification of the most promising and innovative training schemes and methodologies for meeting the future requirements of the transport workforce.

In doing so, a special emphasis was dedicated to intermodality.

The workshop that was, to a large extend, interactive in nature was chaired by Wouter Van den Berghe (Director of the Knowledge Centre, Belgian Road Safety Institute) and led to many inspiring exchanges between the organizers and the audience and to many innovative ideas for imaging intermodality in the future.

After a general presentation of the skillful project and its first results, participants were asked to discuss about 4 themes relevant/applied to intermodality : future intermodal jobs, gas in education, new technologies, necessary skills for intermodal jobs. The main outcomes of these group panel discussions are:

Future intermodal jobs

• There is a need to adopt a user-centric (individual needs) approach in all jobs
• There is a need for more workers in the logistic sector (e.g. logistic engineer)
• There is a need for paying more attention to vulnerable road users and to develop more expertise in that segment
• There is a need for standardizing job profiles and competences across companies (e.g. importance for skills evaluation and certification)
• Some current profiles will need to adapt to future needs and other will be likely to emerge, e.g. : IT related job, expert in data mining, sharing and protection, transport/logistic/infrastructure planners, specialist in interoperability (e.g. in railways), R&D, software engineer, experts for a better analysis of freight demands, infrastructure and equipment’s developers, designers, drivers and driving trainers (automation, connectedness, ecodriving, sustainability,…)

Gaps in education

• Faster adaptation of training organizations and providers to better accommodate fast developing technologies
• Better sharing of knowledges between the industry(ies)/companies and the education field
• Improvement of online and remote trainings with (human) support services
• Development of new training methodologies/technologies using, e.g., robots, simulators, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, gamification…
• Better taylorization/individualization of lifelong learning (job profiles/competences recycling) due to constant technology development.

New technologies

• The identified new and emerging technologies relevant for intermodality : digital technologies (e.g. instant information and booking services), e-marketing and data market for personalized services, cybersecurity, automation across modes, connected vehicles,…
• - Developing user-friendly and self-explaining technologies (e.g. machine/vehicle will learn user how to use it)
• - There is a need for developing new technologies that will allow a better adaption of the transport offer to the users needs (rush hours, first/last mile problems,…)
• - General remark : the technologies are already there but the business models and scenarios for implementing them effectively are lacking

Necessary skills for intermodal jobs

• Multidisciplinary skills : e.g. multimodality, user-centric approach,…
• New technologies skills : e.g. automated driving skills, cybersecurity,…