Riga, 1-2 July 2025
As Europe works towards building more sustainable, efficient, and data-driven transport systems, projects like EMERALDS aim to enabling public authorities to plan better, act faster, and make smarter decisions. Designed to support multimodal traffic management across European cities, EMERALDS brings together municipalities, mobility experts, and technology providers to co-develop practical solutions and scalable digital tools. And for readers who don’t know what EMERALDS is all about, it is a Horizon Europe initiative developing a “Mobility Analytics as a Service” toolset that leverages edge computing to process extreme scale urban data – helping cities forecast demand, manage traffic flow, and assess risks during events – through three core use cases in Riga, Rotterdam and The Hague, focusing respectively on trip inference and traffic flow analytics; multimodal integrated traffic management; and risk assessment, prediction and forecasting for events.
In this context, the EMERALDS General Assembly and Use Case Workshop, held on 1–2 July 2025 in Riga, Latvia, was a moment to assess the project’s current standing and build stronger ties with local stakeholders. The event brought together representatives from across the consortium and beyond, offering a platform to align, evaluate, and engage.
Sustaining Communications Across the Board
Trust-IT Services, leading the dissemination and communication activities in the project, continues to provide strategic and operational support to ensure EMERALDS’ work is both visible and understood. From overseeing online platforms and social media campaigns to drafting editorial content and press materials, Trust-IT has been working to translate complex technical progress into actionable, accessible stories.
At the General Assembly, Trust-IT presented ongoing activities, and a proposal to further amplify and refine visibility through targeted LinkedIn campaigns, aimed at increasing reach. The approach builds on the proven success of similar campaigns in other valuable EU projects, such as FAIRCORE4EOSC, and PREPSOIL, where communication efforts, coordinated by Trust-IT, facilitated their results and outcomes effectively reached the right audience.
Preparing for the Road Ahead: Exploitation Workshop
The first day concluded with an Exploitation Workshop co-organised and moderated by Trust-IT and CARTO. The workshop gave partners a space to reflect on the Key Exploitable Results (KERs) developed across the project and discuss pathways for adoption. Through interactive feedback sessions, participants flagged key challenges, particularly around funding availability and tool maturity – insights which will help refine EMERALDS’ exploitation planning.
Stakeholder Workshop: Insights from Riga’s Transport Ecosystem
Trust-IT also facilitated the Use-Case Workshop on the second day. It gathered institutional actors and practitioners from the city of Riga, including representatives from Rīgas satiksme, the municipality-owned public transport company. Among the highlights was a recorded interview with Jānis Stankūns, Head of Route Network Unit, whose contribution provided a grounded perspective on the practical needs and expectations of local authorities.
Partners presented project outputs and preliminary results from the Riga pilot, with key takeaways including:
- Public transport flow and validation analysis across neighbourhoods to identify weak connectivity and accessibility challenges;
- Estimated time loss per route and passenger based on GTFS real-time data, shedding light on areas where optimisation is needed;
- Demonstration of Trajectools, the QGIS plugin developed by AIT, enabling the visualisation and analysis of public transport delays using both static and real-time data. Notably, the tool is among the most mature in the project, and was recently recognised as one of EMERALDS’ key innovations under the Innovation Radar initiative. The announcement is featured in the EMERALDS press release, prepared and soon disseminated by Trust-IT, listing all the praised innovations.
The workshop also validated the relevance and usability of EMERALDS outputs from a stakeholder perspective on the readiness of the tools and their next steps and contribution in improving decision-making around public transport services. With strengthened collaboration among partners and fresh validation from external stakeholders, EMERALDS now moves into its final phase.
Stay connected with EMERALDS for more updates on events, use cases progress and city-level impact: https://emeralds-horizon.eu
