Activity 5 – Evaluation

The overall objective of the EU EIP Evaluation activity is to support national and corridor evaluation approaches in order to present a global picture of the impact of ITS Deployment on the European road network and to demonstrate the benefits of ITS investment / CEF funding to the European citizen. The Evaluation activity additionally sets out to specifically determine the impacts, benefits and costs of ITS Directive priority action deployments in order to elaborate the most feasible operating environments for the deployment of different EU priority services. 

The Evaluation Group therefore endeavour to ensure that deployment evaluations carried out by each of the ITS deployment Corridors are consistent, high quality and compliant with relevant evaluation guidance.  In so doing the Activity will support the ITS Corridors to deliver their respective evaluation plans, define common Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for ITS and, finally, to deliver high quality corridor level evaluation reports which consistently and adequately demonstrate the benefit of ITS Deployment for the European citizen.

The main Evaluation activity tasks will include:

Work Package 1: ITS Direction Priority Action Evaluation

An evaluation plan will be developed to facilitate the assessment of the ITS priority service deployments carried out in 2016-2019 in EC-supported corridor projects and beyond. The plan aims at one common study design to enable robust estimates of the impacts, benefits and costs expressed in European KPIs. The data will be analysed with state of the art evaluation methods to transform the impacts into monetary values where possible and specific attention will be given to the impacts with no commonly accepted European valuation methods.

Work Package 2: KPI Definition

The development and definition of harmonized Key Performance Indicators (KPI) which will be defined in conjunction with implementing bodies, deployment corridors and other stakeholders and will enable a more consistent reporting and assessments of the impact / benefit of ITS deployment at the European level.  This work will draw on work undertaken in the EIP+ programme and will align itself to the parallel work undertaken by the European Commission.  The KPI definitions derived will be reviewed periodically on the basis of feedback received through ongoing dialogue with the implementing corridors and countries.

Work Package 3: Guidance and Reference

The provision of appropriate common evaluation guidance and reporting templates to ensure a consistent approach to and output from ITS evaluation as far as possible.  This work package will also see the establishment and maintenance of a comprehensive and well-structured Evaluation document library providing access to reference documents, guidance, evaluation plans and best practice examples, as well as an archive for all relevant evaluation reporting past and present.

Work Package 4: Evaluation Toolkit

The task will plan, develop and maintain an Evaluation toolkit throughout the course of the CEF funding perspective which will offer implementing bodies a means to assess the potential impacts and / or benefits (or dis-benefits) of a proposed deployment or service implementation. The toolkit will also offer appropriate guidance in order to assess the impacts and / or benefits of specific implementations and will support implementing bodies in deciding the best way to undertake their evaluation of a particular ITS service implementation.  The toolkit will be informed by the comprehensive evaluation archive developed from EasyWay and phase 1 corridor programme reports.  It will also then include the reporting to be undertaken by corridors throughout the CEF period.  The toolkit will nurture a common European approach to ITS evaluation which will potentially offer implementing bodies both a time and cost saving in when deciding their evaluation methodologies.

Work Package 5: ITS Evaluation Reports

Periodic and final global evaluation reporting will be produced based on collated ITS CEF deployment evaluations, as well as a report on the assessment of the ITS Directive Priority actions.