European Transport Conference Awards

Goudappel Land-Use/Transportation Award

The Goudappel award for the best paper written for and presented in a Planning for Sustainable Land Use and Transport seminar was awarded to Eivind Jamholt Baera from Norconsult. Together with his colleague Linda Alfheim and co-authors Glenn Lyons and Charlene Rohr from Mott MacDonald they wrote the winning paper “Using scenarios to address uncertainty and help achieve sustainable mobility: the case of small and medium-sized Norwegian cities”.

Goudappel Award Winners

 

	Eivind Jamholt Baera works as a Senior Advisor and Business Developer within transport and mobility in Norconsult (Norway). He has worked on all levels and phases of planning – ranging from strategic transportation planning (including major infrastructure schemes), feasibility studies, mobility planning on a regional/local level, as well as detailed traffic modelling. In recent years, he has specialised in foresight and scenario methodology, innovation, as well as smarter use of data and technology. Eivind aims to use his versatile experience within mobility planning, combined with foresight and scenario planning, to explore multiple possible futures of mobility – leading to better and more robust decisions in the present.
	Linda Alfheim works as a Group Manager and a specialist in transport modelling in Norconsult (Norway). She has for more than twenty years worked with strategic transport planning and has long looked for better ways of handling uncertainty related to future mobility. During the last few years, she has focused her work on foresight methodology and the use of scenarios. In Norconsult Eivind and Linda are part of an interdisciplinary team working together to improve models, methods and mindset related to decision-making within strategic planning.
	Glenn Lyons is Mott MacDonald’s Professor of Future Mobility at the University of the West of England (UWE). Glenn has pioneered the "decide and provide" paradigm, has introduced the concept of Triple Access Planning and is widely recognized for his expertise and experience in how to address uncertainty in strategic planning, part of vision-led approaches to shaping the future.
	Charlene Rohr works as Technical Principal in Mott MacDonald (England). Her expertise lies in the cross-section between understanding travel behaviour, transport policy, transport models and future methodology/scenario planning - with a view to exploring future transport challenges and developing robust political solutions.

 

Previous Goudappel Award Winners

Jacobs Award for Most Innovative Use of Data

The Jacobs Data Award is given to the paper showing the most innovative use of data in transport policy, practice or research.

The winner of the Jacobs Award for the paper demonstrating the most innovative use of data was the paper titled “An Integrated Framework of Social Media Opinion Mining and Category System to Analyse Public Opinion Towards Transportation Technology and Services” by Katherine Cai Xuefen from the Land Transport Authority of Singapore. We went through an extensive selection process to pick out this excellent paper as the winner.

More about the Jacob's Award winning paper and Author

Jacobs Award Winner

Katherine Cai Xuefen has more than 15 years of work experience in LTA and had contributed in the field of traffic design and management, ITS development, ITS standards, data quality, governance & management and business intelligence analytics. She had been involved in several transport computational science research such as the social media sentiment analysis and topic modelling on users’ perceptions towards autonomous vehicles, data fusion techniques (LSTM and multiple linear regression algorithm) and free-flow speed estimation techniques (maximum-likelihood estimation) in ITS. She is also an Institution of Engineers, Singapore (IES) Chartered Engineer (Transportation).

Previous Jacobs Award Winners

Neil Mansfield Award

Neil Mansfield Award for the best paper from a sole author aged 35 or under. The Neil Mansfield award is given in the name of a brilliant young researcher in the UK who passed away at a young age. The award is administered by the AET Young Researchers’ and Practitioners’ Forum.

The Neil Mansfield Award Winner

 

Marco Sala is a technical specialist in transport planning. His professional activity is mainly focused on traffic analysis, based on construction of micro and macro simulation models. He also deals with urban spatial planning, specific studies on vehicle parking and feasibility studies. Other professionals contributed to the winning paper as co-authors: Giovanni Acciaro, Margherita Sartori, Espedito Saponaro, Andrea Lai and Eugenio Morello.

The Neil Mansfield Award Honourable Mention

Previous Neil Mansfield Award Winners

European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Urban Mobility Award

In 2024, based on the decision of the Awards Committee (Sally Scarlett, Austin Smyth, Pete Snelson, and András Munkácsy), the following members were honoured at a ceremony during the gala dinner of ETC2024 in Antwerp:

The Excellency Award for noteworthy efforts and achievements contributing to AET’s annual activities

The AET Excellency Award was given to Conall Mac Aongusa in recognition of his outstanding work leading the Transport and Mobility Forum. His leadership helped safeguard the future of AET and ETC during the most challenging period in its history—the COVID-19 pandemic. He initiated a series of online meetings (COVID-19 Conversations) as a prompt response to the lockdown and its effects on the transport sector. He also led the team that transformed these conversations into thematic webinars and, upon their success, into the Transport and Mobility Forum, which has since become a well-known monthly online event of AET. Starting in 2023, TMF has included an annual hybrid event, offering a second opportunity for members to meet in person and discuss pressing topics.

AET Fellowship

In 2024, Iain Macbriar became a Fellow of the Association in recognition of his official roles as Programme Committee Chair, Council and Election Committee member, as well as for his modesty and good humour, which have helped promote AET and, particularly, ETC as an annual opportunity for friends to meet.

For many years, Iain has been an active member of the Local Public Transport (LPT) Programme Committee. He has been a member of AET since its early years and rejoined the LPT committee in 2008, assuming the role of committee chair in 2012, which he held until 2019. The LPT committee has a tradition of convening its annual March/April meetings in different cities across Europe, during which authors are selected. Iain was the first to introduce technical visits during these meetings, inviting public transport operators and authorities to present their networks and policies. This initiative significantly enhanced member participation. Iain has dedicated considerable energy to organizing these visits, leveraging his extensive network of operators. In the committee’s selection process, he consistently prioritized the practical aspects of public transport operations, integrating them with research and policy considerations essential to the committee’s work.