A public draft of European common evaluation methodology (EU-CEM) for connected cooperative automated mobility (CCAM) is available for people planning and doing evaluation for and in CCAM projects, but also for project coordinators and proposal evaluators. The EU-CEM provides guidance for how to lay the foundation for a successful evaluation in the project preparation phase and how to make a feasible evaluation plan. It aims to ensure high quality evaluation which provides reliable input for decision- and policy-making, both among industry and authorities.

Background

In 2020, the European Commission defined the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy, with the policy ambition of large-scale Cooperative and Connected Automated Mobility deployment by 2030. To support the testing of CCAM systems, the Horizon Europe programme has funded the FAME project to establish a European framework for the testing of CCAM on public roads. A part of this framework is the EU-CEM, providing guidance in the form of a handbook on how to set up and carry out evaluation of CCAM.

Sharing best practices and providing common language

The overall scope of the EU-CEM Handbook is to provide guidelines and share best practices for planning and conducting CCAM evaluation, especially impact assessment. The following objectives were set for the EU-CEM:

• Ensure high quality evaluation of CCAM
• Provide common language and basis for CCAM evaluation in different projects
• Allow all CCAM projects to benefit from methodological lessons learned and best practices
• Support comparability and complementarity of evaluation activities
• Ensure exploitation of results of CCAM projects for future research and development
• Ensure that the projects will provide high quality input for decision- and policy-making supporting both industry and authorities

The EU-CEM is especially designed to help projects make robust and feasible evaluation plans in collaboration between those responsible for evaluation and those responsible for implementing the CCAM system. Thorough planning and good collaboration lay the foundation for successful evaluation and project outcomes overall.

Common language is needed to ensure understanding of the focus of evaluation, the methodology applied as well as the results and conclusions. The EU-CEM Handbook is supplemented by the Taxonomy for CCAM which includes the key terminology used in the EU-CEM and for CCAM to ensure that this objective is met.

EU-CEM is for all CCAM projects

The EU-CEM mainly targets large multi-partner projects but is also applicable to small projects. It is most useful for projects where a Technical team, separate from the Evaluation team, is collecting at least part of the data in a field experiment, and especially if it is done at multiple sites. The EU-CEM provides guidelines for essential communication within the project, which is fundamental for setting a feasible evaluation plan that can be realised with the resources available.

The EU-CEM Handbook provides guidelines for three different phases:

1. When writing a project proposal: Chapter 2 provides guidelines for how to lay the ground for successful evaluation in the proposal preparation phase – guidelines written for the partners responsible for the evaluation in the project (referred as ‘the evaluation team’ in this handbook), coordinators and proposal evaluators.
2. When the project starts: Chapter 3 provides guidelines for how to set a feasible evaluation plan, regardless of the evaluation areas in focus, and Chapter 4 describes evaluation area specific guidelines to support this planning – written for the evaluation team, including recommended interaction with other project activities.
3. When the project ends: Chapter 5 provides guidelines for evaluation of the processes and outcomes of the project, to identify new best practices found in the project and to provide feedback to the EU-CEM – written for the evaluation team, to provide input for future updates of the EU-CEM Handbook.

Feedback and suggestions for how to improve the draft handbook are welcome. The final version of the handbook will be published in June 2025.

More information

Draft EU-CEM Handbook: https://www.connectedautomateddriving.eu/methodology/common-evaluation-methodology/

Taxonomy for CCAM: https://taxonomy.connectedautomateddriving.eu/

Webinar: https://www.connectedautomateddriving.eu/blog/event/eu-cem-european-common-evaluation-methodology-for-ccam-webinar/

Text: Satu Innamaa, VTT