IN2ZONE will design and test a prototype next generation transition zone solution that provides a step-change in track support conditions, resulting in a reduction in maintenance interventions. The new solution will combine the newest existing transition solutions with technological advances from other sectors, including recent advances in material science. This interdisciplinary approach will improve both the track super-structure and sub-structure designs, thus ensuring the whole system stiffness is optimised. To increase lifespan, advanced automatic irregularity correcting sleepers will be designed, that are synthetic and optimised for transition zones. This will enable the transition zone solution to self-correct minor vertical track geometry irregularities/faults. Further, the solution architecture will be modular to ensure the benefits are realised in minimal time. The new design will be optimised using the latest advances in discrete and finite element numerical simulation tools, coupled with computational fluid dynamics. The concept will then be constructed and tested at large-scale in an accelerated track testing laboratory facility. This gives a rare and valuable opportunity to develop and test the transition zone solution installation, maintenance and decommissioning, while also assessing long-term settlement behaviour. In addition to the new design, an advanced resilience-based monitoring specification for transition zones will be developed, which will fuse data from multiple track, vehicle and satellite sensors, using edge computing and artificial intelligence to achieve an Industry 4.0 approach for just-in-time maintenance. IN2ZONE’s pan-European consortium comprises 7 stakeholders covering all areas of expertise necessary to execute the project, including three companies, two research Universities, one Infrastructure Manager and one Rail Association.

PLOTO aims at increasing the resilience of the Inland WaterWays (IWW) infrastructures and the connected land- infrastructures, thus ensuring reliable network availability under unfavourable conditions, such as extreme weather, accidents and other kind of hazards. Our main target is to combine downscaled climate change scenarios (applied to IWW infrastructures) with simulation tools and actual data, so as to provide the relevant authorities and their operators with an integrated tool able to support more effective management of their infrastructures at strategic and operational levels. Towards this direction, PLOTO aims to: - use high resolution modelling data for the determination and the assessment of the climatic risk of the selected transport infrastructures and associated expected damages; - use existing data from various sources with new types of sensor-generated data (computer vision) to feed the used simulator; - utilize tailored weather forecasts (combining seamlessly all available data sources) for specific hot-spots, providing early warnings with corresponding impact assessment in real time; - develop improved multi-temporal, multi-sensor UAV- and satellite-based observations with robust spectral analysis, computer vision and machine learning-based assessment for diverse transport infrastructures; - design and implement an integrated Resilience Assessment Platform environment as an innovative planning tool that will permit a quantitative resilience assessment through an end-to-end simulation environment, running “what-if” impact/risk/resilience assessment scenarios. The effects of adaptation measures can be investigated by changing the hazard, exposure and vulnerability input parameters; - design and implement a Common Operational Picture, including an enhanced visualisation interface and an Incident Management System. The PLOTO integrated platform and its tools will be validated in three case studies in Belgium, Romania and Hungary.