Host Organisations

THE SWEDISH NATIONAL ROAD AND TRANSPORT RESEARCH INSTITUTE (VTI)

VTI is an independent transport research institute and Sweden’s largest employer of traffic psychologists. Its primary mission is R&D addressing all modes of transportation and shipping as well as supporting infrastructure. VTI is a Swedish government agency that falls under the operational and supervisory auspices of the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation. VTI carries out applied R&D, studies, measurements, and testing. The Institute has a broad range of expertise, with core competencies in the areas of behaviour and interactions between humans, safety, public transport, traffic and transport analysis, economics, environment vehicles, transport systems, road construction, maintenance, and operation. We endeavour to ensure that knowledge of the transport sector will constantly improve.

Some two hundred people work at VTI, most of them researchers, research assistants, research engineers, and doctoral candidates. Roughly 40 per cent of the employees have licentiate or doctoral degrees. Circa 30 employees are oriented towards traffic psychology and 20 hold a PhD in psychology or human factors. Seven employees are associated professors connected to different universities in Sweden.

VTI is a strong research environment concerning road users, with research on sleepiness, distraction/inattention and elderly. We also conduct research on mobility, accessibility, behaviour and attitudes, and take travellers’ physical, mental, social and societal aspects into consideration. The gender dimension is also growing in importance in our research.

We conduct research on vehicle design, infrastructure and traffic environments on the basis of road users’ and travellers’ different needs. Here the focus is on the interplay between these components and the goal is for our research to result in measures that are conducive to a more efficient and safer transport system. We look for example at different kinds of road user support, both inside and outside the vehicle, which is very much a matter of interaction between human and technology. Among other things we evaluate the effects of new kinds of safety systems in a road safety perspective and how road design influences road safety.

Another area of our research concerns traffic education. Both private individuals and professional drivers need suitable education. Risk awareness and continuous learning in a changing environment are two areas that are important for both groups and for young people, older people and people with disabilities. Through our research we can increase understanding of how different groups of road users’ need for knowledge can be met.

Networks and collaborations
According to the Institute’s instructions VTI may employ a total of five researchers as professors as part of increased collaboration with universities and colleges. Four of these positions are filled. The orientations of the four current professor positions are human-machine-interaction (HMI), technology and social change, pavement technology, and transport economics. In Sweden, VTI collaborates with colleges and universities engaged in transport-related research and education.

We are constantly involved in international research projects as well, mainly in Europe, and participate in international networks and alliances. For instance, VTI is involved in a number of projects in the Horizon 2020 framework programme and has participated in just over 30 projects in EU’s seventh framework programme, serving as project coordinator in five of them.

VTI is an active part of several European forums, such as CEDR, FEHRL, ECTRI, and FERSI. VTI’s national and international networks and alliances offer a guarantee of breadth, depth, and the inter-disciplinarity of knowledge production. There are many potential conference delegates within VTI’s European networks.

Competence centres
VTI is an active part in a total of eight Swedish competence centres with research development to improve the Swedish transport system. Some examples of competence centres are K2 (Sweden’s national centre for research and education on public transport), ViP Driving Simulation Centre, Centre for Transport Studies (CTS), BVFF, and SAFER (The Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre at Chalmers). The competence centres are all interdisciplinary. VTI is administrative host for K2 and BVFF and serves as coordinator for ViP competence centre.

VTI website

SAFER Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre at Chalmers

OUR MISSION: TO ENHANCE TRAFFIC SAFETY

“Zero injuries in road traffic” – that’s our drive and overall goal. We are the open innovation arena where researchers and expertise work together to create safe mobility. Our traffic safety approach covers people, vehicles and the infrastructure – and together we contribute to safer road transports and smarter, more sustainable cities.

SAFER is a research and competence centre founded in 2006 and comprising about 30 partners from the industry, academia and society. Among these are e.g. Volvo Group, Volvo Cars, Autoliv, University of Gothenburg, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Swedish Transport Administration, Swedish Transport Agency, and the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI). Chalmers University of Technology is the host for the centre and the vision is to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on the roads through multidisciplinary research and collaboration. SAFER’s network is broad and international.

SAFER’s office is a meeting place and a melting pot, located in Lindholmen Science Park. 300 researchers are working at SAFER at a regular basis and the global network is vast. Behavioural scientists, psychologists, engineers, medical doctors, researchers and policy makers collaborate to enhance safety on the roads. Our five research areas represent world-class, multi-disciplinary research – all with the single-minded vision to save lives, prevent injuries and enable safe mobility. They are also the open innovation arena where our partners meet and identify key issues to initiate new research based on real-world needs. We carry out research within these five areas:

Systems for accident prevention and automated driving
Road user behavior
Human body protection
Care and rescue
Safety performance evaluation

We research to save lives, prevent injuries and enable safe mobility. Together.

SAFER website

HOSTS

icttp2020 Associate professor Henriette Wallén Warner, VTI and Uppsala University
Henriette Wallén Warner is a senior research fellow at the Swedish National Research Institute (VTI) and an associate professor at Uppsala University. She is also an active member in the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations (EFPA) Standing Committee in Traffic Psychology. With a PhD in Psychology her research focuses on road user behaviour with a special interest for vulnerable road users including their attitudes and acceptance towards self-driving vehicles. Dr Wallén Warner has also conducted several studies examining cross cultural differences. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles within the field of traffic safety, delivered conference presentations in a dozen countries and on a regular basis been involved at peer-reviewing for scientific journals and international conferences including ICTTP 2016 in Brisbane and RS5C.

Therese Jomander, Coordinator, VTI.

Therese Jomander works as a coordinator at the Director General’s office at the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI). She holds a degree in Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. Working in European Commission funded research projects and in organizing the international Road Safety on Five Continents (RS5C) conference, as well as the conference Transportforum, she has both international and extensive coordinating experience.

icttp2020 Professor Jan Andersson, VTI and Linköping University
Jan Andersson is professor in human machine interface (HMI) at the Swedish National Research Institute (VTI) and Linköping University. Professor Andersson has been working with human factors issues since 1997, always from the users’ perspective. His main areas of interest within human factors have been classical HMI issues in applied areas such as fitness to drive (traffic medicine related focus), self-explaining roads, and automated vehicles. Cycling related research has increased rapidly in recent years and professor Andersson has been deeply involved in the construction of a competence research centre related to cycling. Professor Andersson has a PhD in Cognitive psychology from Linköping University. For the last 7 years he was the research director for the Human Factors department at VTI before taking the professorship position in September of 2015. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles, delivered conference presentations and is regularly involved in the peer-reviewing process at scientific journals.

icttp2020 Sonja Forward, VTI
Dr Sonja Forward is a psychologist and a senior researcher who started her work in 1992. Sonja Forward has a PhD in psychology from Uppsala University. For a period of five years she was the Research Director at VTI. Her main areas of research are traffic safety and sustainable transport. Sonja has been in charge of numerous projects both nationally and internationally. She has produced several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, presented more than 50 papers at different conferences, mostly as an invited speaker, and acts as a referee to five different international journals on a regular basis. She has been involved in the organising of several conferences. She is also a President of the Swedish Pedestrian Association (FOT) and a board member of the National Society for Road Safety (NTF).

icttp2020 Professor Emeritus Lars Åberg, Uppsala University
Lars Åberg has been professor in psychology at Uppsala University since 1996 but is now emiritus. He has worked with road traffic safety since 1973. During this time professor Åberg’s research interests were mainly focused on driver behaviour and information acquisition of drivers, effects of police enforcement, analyses of driver error, influences of attitudes and norms on behaviour, effects of technical innovations on driver behaviour. The methods used varied from laboratory experiments to field studies, from behaviour observations to driver interviews and questionnaires. His work has been based on theories of human behaviour, use of advanced statistical modelling (e.g. SEM). Between 2003 and 2009 professor Åberg was the convener of the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations (EFPA) Standing Committee in Traffic Psychology. He has also co-authored a traffic psychology textbook (in Swedish).

icttp2020 Dr Magnus Granström; SAFER
Magnus Granström is the director of SAFER Vehicle and Traffic Research Centre. Dr Granström holds a PhD degree in applied physics and has extensive experience from collaborative projects and applied research, having worked for 15 years within the Volvo Group with a focus on projects involving industry, institutes and academy. He also has experience from academic work, having held a position as Associate Dean of Research at the School of Engineering, Jönköping University. In addition to this, he has been chairing several working groups and similar activities within organisations on the European level, for instance within EUCAR, the European Council for Automotive R&D.

icttp2020 Ewa Bråthe, project manager Sweden Meetx AB
Meetx has extensive experience as PCO – Professional Conference Organizer. We are an innovative, driven and competent partner offering services to companies, organizations and government agencies seeking to implement effective and stimulating meetings, congresses and conferences in Sweden and abroad. We offer complete management of the entire event and have a full range of services before, during and after the meeting. You can also freely choose individual services. For each project, we are building a team that stands for expertise in each particular area that is needed.