Yesterday, July 22, the 2nd Steering Committee meeting of TRIBUTE team was organized, via Microsoft Teams platform. Due to the persistent COVID-19 traveling restrictions it was not possible to organize this meeting in presence in Maribor, Slovenia. Nevertheless, the discussion among project partners’ representatives was very constructive which in the end led to very comprehensive conclusions, important for the future of TRIBUTE. Since this Steering Committee meeting was held immediately after the finalization of the first project period, an overview of activities realized within several work packages was given and analyzed.
Regarding WP Management, one of the most crucial factors was the Partnership Agreement with a joint signature, which has been released on May 21 and distributed between partners accordingly. Prior to the agreement, a Steering Committee has been formed in April, while Internal Regulation document remains to be released by the end of August. In addition to already mentioned, a deliverable ‘Monitoring and Evaluation – Quality and Risk Management plan’, which aims at ensuring the quality standards set both at Programme and Project level and the proper project implementation during its entire lifetime, is planned to be released by September 2021.
Within WP T1 – Methodological framework and assessment PP4-MARIBOR, as WP T1 Leader, gave an overview of Activity T1.1 “Identification of relevant stakeholders” pointing out that significant progress was made. A lot of stakeholders have been identified by PPs who were also able to collect different Letters of Intent signed by those stakeholders. After merging all available data, more than 190 different stakeholders were presented, while 57 signed Letters of Intent were collected. Following this summary, the Lead Partner (Politecnico Milano) gave an overview of the Activity T1.2 “Living Lab creation and implementation”, highlighting how Living Labs represent the innovative approach to be followed within TRIBUTE project. A methodology for the Living Lab creation, which includes hints and suggestions to project partners in order to follow a common pathway for LL creation and management, will be finalized by the end of August. As a part of this overview, a deliverable T1.2.11 ‘Knowledge Platform’ was also discussed – the finalization of this element is in progress and should be shared during the coming weeks. The Knowledge Platform was conceived as a tool for sharing information with stakeholders as well as for results capitalization. A suitable already existing platform is the “EUSAIR Stakeholder platform” developed within the ADRION Facility Point Project, that would be taken into consideration.
Municipality of Milan, being WP T2 Leader, presented the methodology proposed to develop the action plans which every city would have to complete within project period 5. It was outlined that, according to the recommendations received in the clearing phase from ADRION JS, the Action Plan should have been focused on the pilot actions proposed by each partner. Therefore, the proposed methodology would include in a first part a description of, the overall strategy for the urban mobility, e.g., included in a high-level policy document such as the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP), the strategic area of interest in which the pilot action would have its ground, and the targets included in the SUMPs that could help to monitor the contribution of the pilot action implementation to the overall strategy. In the second part, the methodology would focus on the mobility projects planned or in progress in the city and would describe the plans for the implementation of the TRIBUTE pilot action, including the expected contribution to the targets identified in the mobility master plan (e.g., the SUMP). According to stated, two deadlines were agreed for sending the necessary inputs for the pilot action identification (September 17), and for sending the inputs related to the methodology for the Action Plan development (September 29). It was agreed also that PP2-MILAN would have organized technical meetings on September 7 with smaller groups of partners based on of the area of interest of their own pilot actions.
As for the last work package in meeting’s focus, WP Communication, the City of Zagreb presented a short summary of communication activities performed by July 30, 2021. By the end of project period 1, it was necessary to complete 3 tasks – project poster, online publication of information about the TRIBUTE project on your institutional website and press release on 2 occasions. Regardless of any potential backlogs, the elements were successfully implemented by project partners. In the coming project period, the communication aspect of the project will be expanded with the additional elements, needed to be delivered – like the project newsletter, planned to be released in October 2021, and local public events, which are uncertain due to COVID-19 global pandemic and associated countermeasures. PP5-ZAGREB also stated that drafting of Communication & Dissemination Plan is foreseen in the coming months, while in the meantime it is mandatory to realize communication activities regularly by the means that are available to the project consortium – foremost via TRIBUTE official website.
As for the main conclusive point, LP-POLIMI emphasized that operatively the project is in the phase in which project partners should focus on the creation and launching of the Living Lab and on the development of the Action Plan, asking all partners to keep the Lead Partner informed about progresses on such activities that will be made during next months.
The date of 20th January 2022 was agreed for the next Steering Committee meeting that should be hosted by the PP7-NOVI SAD. Hopefully the meeting would be in presence but the Lead Partner jointly with the hosting PP7 would decide by around December 2021 whether to organize the meeting in presence or online, depending on the COVID-19 traveling restrictions.