SWARCO looks back on successful IRF World Congress
The 16-million inhabitant metropolis of Istanbul, Türkiye hosted the 2024 World Congress of the International Road Federation from 15-18 October. SWARCO supported the event with the motto Connecting to Empower Mobility: Roads as Enablers of a Sustainable Future for All as a Gold sponsor and was multiply represented by conference speakers and as an exhibitor.
On our 36 m2 exhibition stand, the visitors mainly from Turkey, Asia, Africa, and Europe were introduced to our capabilities in AI-supported traffic control, smart LED signalling devices, and our range of high-performance glass beads and road marking systems for improved nighttime visibility of the lane markings. Our GoGreen Virtual Reality experience attracted particular attention, with users being impressed by this interactive and a little bit playful approach to explain how intelligent traffic systems and solutions can help mitigate climate change by transforming urban landscapes, prioritizing air quality, traffic flow and safety for (vulnerable) road users.
SWARCO CEO Michael Schuch was invited to the Closed Ministerial Meeting and used the opportunity for a short statement among the forty high-level attendees. In a Plenary Session attended by representatives from the Transport Research associations in the USA and Australia and the Asian Development Bank, Michael underlined once more the importance of giving more weight to sustainability criteria when it comes to public procurement processes. Tomasz Burghardt from SWARCO’s Road Marking Systems research department present a poster on the subject of Inadequate contrast ratio of road markings as an indicator for ADAS failure and also talked about the role of microplastics and the mitigating effect glass beads in road markings.
Image: Laura Coconea, Head of Innovation and Technology ITS at SWARCO Group,
part of the Augmented CCAM Workshop panel at IRF 2024
Laura Coconea, Head of Innovation and Technology of SWARCO's Intelligent Traffic Systems (ITS) division, was part of the event's Augmented CCAM Workshop.
Itir Coskun from SWARCO's Innovation community elaborated on the Impact of traffic management solutions on the environment: key findings from the literature, and summarized our GoGreen initiative, in which we are comitted to supporting cities taking part in the European Green Deal to secure a more sustainable future. This is a bold and ambitious plan to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. To achieve this goal, it aims to transform our mobility habits, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and thus protect the environment and biodiversity.
A highlight of the IRF World Congress 2024 was the Awards Ceremonyduring the Closing Plenary on 17 October. Awards in 14 categories were handed out by IRF President Dimitris Mandalozis. We are very proud that the award in the category “Technology and Innovation” was conferred to SWARCO for its proactive approach towards climate neutrality with our GoGreen initiative.
Image: Former IRF President Bill Halkias, Itir Coskun, IRF President Dimitris Mandalozis, Richard Neumann and Hamdi Aydin from IRF in Türkiye at the Award Ceremony.
Image: IRF 2024 Awards
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