Ten years ago, the Board of the Volvo Research and Education Foundations (VREF), under the chairmanship of Dr. Arne Wittlöv, decided to focus all its activities on one area: Future Urban Transport — How to deal with complexity (FUT). This book is a progress report on that work, highlighting examples of findings from this research effort.
VREF aims to make a difference, by developing new approaches and new initiatives. Acknowledging the complexities of urban transport and its development within different contexts led VREF to search for new approaches in the field as well as to examine specific urban cases. Therefore, VREF has supported research programmes on all continents demonstrating the variety of progress in the field.

VREF invited proposals for research programmes within the overall framework of FUT. The proposals were reviewed by the VREF Scientific Council with respect to topic, organization, the track record of the principal researchers as well as the prospects of imaginative and promising risk-taking in order to reach new insights. Over the years, interaction between researchers and practitioners has also gained in importance. The VREF Board made the final selection of research programmes and the selected organisations were designated Centres of Excellence (CoE).

Each new CoE was allocated about €2.6 million over five years, provided the outlined research programme and the promised deliveries were followed. VREF has placed heavy emphasis on the ability of the research groups to attract co-funding. In this way, VREF´s support has contributed to establishing research groups in areas of long-term importance.
Thus far there are eight CoEs established globally, and 200+ person-years of research have been conducted with VREF support. These CoEs represent a network of competencies comprised of 100+ researchers working on a portfolio of topics. This is an established, global infrastructure of researchers for future initiatives. The network of CoEs represents both deep knowledge as well as a multitude of nuances in specific topics. VREF intends to continue to strengthen this network.
VREF recently began to further develop the comprehensive research portfolio it supports. Calls have been issued for proposals on specific topics that the Board feels are particularly important for the future of urban transport. The current (2011) call covers urban freight and its interaction with urban passenger transport.