INCRIS · Improving International Cooperation and R&D Road Infrastructure Strategy for Ukraine

Ukraine plays a strategic role in facilitating East-West transport connections, the country’s strategic road network. It however, cannot handle the increasing traffic load due to insufficient technical parameters. The overall objective of the INCRIS coordinating action is to ensure that the cooperation capacities of Ukraine’s leading road research centre, the Shulgin State Road Research Institute (DNDI) are reinforced in order for it to foster its integration into the European Research Area and this improve road infrastructure in Ukraine through joint research. The project aims to establish strategic partnerships between DNDI and EU road research centres in order to facilitate knowledge sharing. The project will help DNDI to develop partnerships and set up joint research programmes through networking. It also aims to strengthen the ability of Ukrainian researchers to take part in future FP7 funded research projects through training on project management accompanied by secondment of DNDI staff at the Brussels office of the Forum of European National Highway Research Laboratories. The sharing and dissemination of knowledge between DNDI and research institutes in member states will be facilitated by setting up a bilingual website, translating scientific results of DNDI into English and disseminating them through various channels. A bilingual project brochure will also be produced and participation of DNDI researchers in international conferences in the partner countries will be supported. The project will also assist in building a research strategy for DNDI in order to increase its scope and regional coverage in Ukraine as well as to improve its responses to the socio-economic needs of the country. Eventually, the project will contribute to improve transport infrastructure in Ukraine through enabling researchers to find the best solutions, locally initiated or an adaption of existing know-how while taking the principle of sustainability into account.