he Israeli Smart Transportation Research Center (ISTRC) at the Technion in collaboration with Bar-Ilan University was established jointly by the Smart Mobility Initiative in Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office and the Council For Higher Education, with the aim of encouraging research and development, entrepreneurship and industry in the field of smart mobility in Israel.
The establishment of the center represents a significant and important step in the implementation of the Israel’s National Plan for Smart Mobility, and another step towards making Israel a leading center of knowledge in this area.
Smart transportation research is interdisciplinary in nature, and hence requires collaboration between researchers from different fields and academic departments and institutions, together with a constant dialogue among industry, academy and decision makers. Nine Professional Committees, composed of researchers from the academy, the industry and the public sector, were established to cover relevant research topics: six committees operating in key areas of transportation and three committees focusing on methodological directions and enabling technologies. The committees’ main objective is to develop, assess and analyse research gaps in the fields of their expertise, and to recommend pressing topics for the center’s Calls for Research. There is a strong collaboration between the committees. We drew the idea of the committees’ structure from the world leading Transportation Research Board (TRB).