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Within EIT Urban Mobility, cities are our driving force and enabler of faster adoption of innovation.
To harness the wider city innovation capacity and ensure innovation closer to citizens, we developed a Rapid Application for Transport (RAPTOR) Pilot in 2020. This pilot helped 4 cities/towns identify niche mobility issues in specific locations with defined parameters and clear success criteria. Once these niche city mobility challenges were defined, a competition was launched for local innovators, teams, and start-ups to propose any solution as long as the original issue and outcomes were addressed. This provided space for lateral thinking beyond our own networks. The initial pilot was extended to a total of 13 cities and 19 niche mobility challenges in 2022.
Each city, supported by technical and business advisors, selected the most promising solution to receive an award, in-kind and cash, to advance the proposal to a Solution to be tested in the city within four months of award. For the Innovation Programme of EIT Urban Mobility, agile entrepreneurial innovation based on problem/challenges with rapid development timelines closer to citizens and in a named location, has the potential to become a powerful tool in our innovation agenda.
RAPTOR, an agile innovation sub-project, is compatible with and complements our traditional larger scale projects funded in the Business Plan. Moreover, the internal competition in RAPTOR both promotes the wider urban mobility agenda and draws cutting edge innovators/ SMEs into our community. With the new edition of the RAPTOR programme in 2023, EIT Urban Mobility will select up to 12 Applicants from across Europe to develop solutions to niche mobility challenges. Existing documentation and lessons learned from RAPTOR 2022 will be key in ensuring an acceleration of innovation in cities, closer to citizens and closer to the innovation’s edge.
We look forward to seeing exactly what our cities, partners, start-ups & SMEs can achieve under this successful agile innovation set-up.
Call Main Features
| Call for Proposals Main Features | |
| Key dates of the call calendar | – Call opening: 6 March 2023 – Call closing (submission of completed application): 6 May 2023 at 17:00 CET – Eligibility and admissibility check: First half of May 2023 – Evaluation of proposals: May – June 2023 – Panel hearing: May – June 2023 – Communication of results: 7 July 2023 – Tentative start of the projects: August 2023 |
| Total estimated EIT Funding allocated to this call | 420,000€ |
| Project duration | RAPTOR projects will last from August to December 2023. |
| Submission portal | EIT Urban Mobility AwardsPlatform |
| List of documents to be submitted | – Application form is available on the Awards platform – Legal incorporation documents and VAT number |
| List of documents to take into consideration | – Call manual (Amended version 05/05/2023) – EIT Urban Mobility Strategic Agenda 2021-2027 – Eligibility of expenditure – Appeal procedure – Template of the Financial Support Agreement – Horizon Europe Grant Agreement (specifically articles 16 and 17) – Implementation handbook – List of KPIs |
| Short summary of the topics to be addressed | Each City has issued a City Challenge, found at www.raptorproject.eu and attached in Annex II, highlighting their niche city mobility challenges and information necessary to assess their issue and location. |
| Evaluation criteria | – Excellence, novelty, and innovation, – Impact and financial sustainability, and – Quality and efficiency of the implementation |
Info sessions and contact details
To help applicants with the preparation and submission of their proposals, EIT Urban Mobility will host one call launch information session as well as two live Q&A online. These online information events will focus on the call content, the challenges, the submission and evaluation procedures, and the financial aspects. These three events will be recorded and made available on the EIT UM YouTube and the RAPTOR Project website in the News section.
Please find the calendar of events and the link to register in the table below:
| Type of event | Topic covered | Date and time (CET) | Access to platform |
| Webinar | Call info session | 15 March 2023 10.00 – 11.00 CET | Zoom |
| Webinar | Live Q&A – Challenge description (first half) | 21 March 2023 10.00 – 11.00 CET | Zoom |
| Webinar | Live Q&A – Challenge description (second half) | 22 March 2023 10.00 – 11.00 CET | Zoom |
In parallel to the call information sessions, all applicants may contact EIT Urban Mobility to resolve any concerns or doubts on the general/technical procedures and call content. These are the key contact details of the EIT Urban Mobility team for questions related to this call:
| Type of contact | |
| Legal, Financial, Administrative and general procedures | pmo@eiturbanmobility.eu |
| RAPTOR Team | raptor@eiturbanmobility.eu |
