Clear control
In the ten years that VREF has been funding research, the process of approving funding for research centres has developed, with increasingly clear control over the research content and monitoring of how the work progresses. VREF’s Scientific Council is responsible for both evaluating the scientific quality of funding applications submitted to VREF and for monitoring the research that is performed. “We have both responsive and proactive tasks, in that we evaluate the quality of the applications we receive and we continuously follow-up, evaluate and recommend adjustments to ongoing research in the centres,” says Bengt Kasemo, the Chairman of VREF’s Scientific Council.

Specific demands
The Scientific Council monitors the research, partly by evaluating the research publications that the centres present every year and partly through more extensive evaluations of programmes (together with the VREF Board) when they are halfway through their funding cycle. Monitoring also occurs through workshops held at the centres. “Over the years, we have become more active with respect to monitoring and follow-up of the direction and content of the research. We are much more observant of what happens in the projects, and we make more, clearer and more specific demands regarding how different parts of the research projects are managed. Even with centres that already have an established focus, we can elect to emphasize certain aspects of the continuation of their work,” says Kasemo.

Synthesis
One aspect that has become clearer and more important over the years is planning each centre’s final report very early. “The final reports must include a synthesis of what the centre has accomplished. We begin to emphasize the importance of preparing for that synthesis already during the halfway evaluation. Otherwise, the programmes experience a time crunch toward the end, with far too many loose ends and incomplete sub-projects,” says Kasemo.

Future research topics
Identifying and formulating future research topics for new centres is an increasingly important task for VREF. Bengt Kasemo sees the shift from open calls for proposals (where the applicants determine the content) toward targeted requests for proposals (where VREF defi nes the focus) as an outcome of VREF’s experience during its first ten years. “As a research funder it is about being active, ensuring that what you invest in is of high international quality, and living up to VREF’s policy that the results get used and make a difference. At the same time, we must show confidence in the researchers and their ability to identify and develop relevant research questions. This requires a balance between exercising control while maintaining respect for the researchers,” he says.

Targeted requests
The shift toward more targeted requests for proposals also places demands on VREF as a research funder. “We currently take a more active role in the research we invest in. We have gone from being a traditional research funder to more of an agent of change. This requires that we share our experiences from the FUT programme with new centres to a greater degree. And we are clear that we want the solutions that are created within FUT to lead to change,” says Måns Lönnroth, a VREF Board member.

Freight transport
The next research topic that VREF has decided to tackle is about freight transport in urban environments. “Much of the research on freight focuses on logistics; how one transports something from one place to another. But we have observed a need to look more closely at how freight transport within cities influences – and is influenced by – a range of factors,” says Lönnroth. Questions that VREF hopes a new centre can answer are: to what extent does transport of freight effect or disturb the transport of people and what can be done to reduce such impacts, and; how does freight traffic influence traffic disruptions, noise levels, air pollution, carbon-dioxide emissions, etc.?

Specific and general knowledge
One way to ensure that results get used is to involve actors that are expected to find the results useful in the actual research. Another way is to disseminate the knowledge gained more broadly than to those who are most closely involved. “Early on, we recognized the possibility of disseminating results by gathering all of the researchers in the programme, as well as different end-users, at FUT conferences every third year. Networking between the centres is important, and has gradually increased in importance as the centres have grown in number and maturity. Our hope is that the researchers will remain active within the network even after our funding comes to an end,” says Bengt Kasemo.

Different solutions
One question that has arisen through networking is which knowledge and solutions arrived at are general, regardless of a city’s geographic and cultural environment, and can therefore be useful for more actors, and which are more specific to a given city or region and thereby not as applicable in other contexts. “The research centres are very different, depending on where they are located. The problems and solutions look different in New Delhi than in Cape Town or New York. What we are gradually learning at our centres is how to sort out which results are general and broadly applicable, and which are more specific,” says Kasemo. This may actually be a future area of research. “Our focus is not on the technical solutions per se, but on the city as a system, which is often where the bottleneck for achieving sustainable transport systems lies. But every city has its own history, culture and values. As a result, a solution that works in one city may not work at all in another. Looking more closely at what knowledge is specific and what is general is a research task,” he says.

One hope is that VREF will also be able to establish activities in Sweden. “It is of course a Swedish foundation that supports FUT, so we should also have Swedish participation in the international network,” says Måns Lönnroth.