The existing Critical Infrastructure (CI) of Europe in the water, energy, urban and transport sector is facing major challenges because of pressures such as climate change, extreme weather, geo-hazards, aging and increased usage in combination with pivotal changes in the CI to meet long-term societal goals (e.g. energy transition). The GEOLAB research infrastructure consists of 11 unique installations in Europe aimed to study subsurface behavior and the interaction with structural CI elements (e.g. a bridge) and the environment. The installations already represent the best of the state-of-the-art available today. However, up to now, work in these installations has been independent and uncoordinated, significantly limiting the outcome for users among academia, industry and CI network managers. There is a gap in the European research landscape for an integrated, advanced research infrastructure in this field. This GEOLAB initiative will fill that gap. The scientific research community will use the innovative capabilities of GEOLAB from the JRAs to perform ground-breaking research, to be published in international peer reviewed, high impact journals. For CI managers and policy makers, the activities will result in a more comprehensive understanding of the challenges facing CI and evidence to base decision making upon. The construction industry will use GEOLAB to proof innovative solutions for the CI and so gain more leadership in the industrial and enabling technologies. The GEOLAB consortium will engage in different types of innovations processes with Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). There will be close interaction with those SMEs that develop user-friendly engineering software from numerical modelling advances which are validated in the TA projects. We will explicitly challenge SMEs on sensing, new materials and other niches for innovative solutions, which will have spinoff in other fields of application, contributing to the competitiveness of Europe.

RAILGARAILGAP is an essential step towards green, safe, smart mobility on rails. It focuses on developing innovative High Accuracy, High Precision Ground Truth and Digital Maps, essential elements of an EGNSS train positioning system and a V&V Environment. The outcomes will address two show stoppers: lack of high-quality data with ground truth (needed for developing new navigation systems) and a modernized process for mapping existing train tracks cost-effectively, by deriving mapping information directly from trains in commercial operation. This will enable positioning with unprecedented reliability and efficiency in the railway operations. The missing piece is a methodology to collect and aggregate the data without operational overheads or labour, at minimal cost in hardware while removing any need for trackside infrastructure. RAILGAP addresses these challenges with a method based on commercial trains collecting massive amounts of data. This enables characterizing even the most challenging railway environments. Results will support the GSA roadmap in adopting EGNSS in train Command & Control Systems (CCS) and trigger contributions from stakeholders. We will exploit a fusion of GNSS with data from other sensors as IMU, Lidar and Camera. Dual-Freq., Multi-Const. GNSS is key to improving map accuracy in challenging environments (urban areas, tree canopies) extending coverage of GNSS on rails. RAILGAP will make ERTMS and CCS with EGNSS sustainable, helping modernise regional and local lines, where passengers will benefit daily. It also enhances the case for ERTMS and CCS by lowering energy consumption. Project coordinator is RFI, who has been very involved in piloting GNSS-based technology for ERTMS like the Novara-Rho pilot line. The team has experts in rail and satellite navigation and includes research organizations, engineering consultants, railway operators and stakeholder representatives, forming a well-recognized consortium with long-term working experience.