Since FP5 the European Commission has invested in many CSAs in order to facilitate the involvement of IND, SMEs, HES, and RTOs in European aeronautics RDI activities. Most of these activities were successful and contributed to integrating new actors in European aeronautics RDI networks and projects.
However, even successful CSAs had limited effect beyond their lifetime and only very few could establish a self-sustaining organisation as e.g. the European Aeronautics Science Network EASN, while the majority ended in final reports, in no longer updated databases, at best in personal networks. Although several Eastern European regions as e.g. the Aviation Valley in South-Eastern Poland are developing their AAT clusters, they did not yet catch up fully. Also, their participation to European AAT projects remained limited.
The CSA RADIAN stimulated an increased collaboration in aviation research at EU level. It focused on regions in EU Member States and AC such as Ukraine, with lower participation in the EU Framework Programmes thus contributing to competitiveness, economical and societal benefits of the regions addressed.
RADIAN provided the most current and most comprehensive analysis of the European AAT research landscape, complementing earlier European activities. The analytical methodology developed in Pillar 1 can be re-applied in future if an update of the analysis is needed. Coaching programmes prepared and performed in Pillar 2 are available for further usage; the concepts to set-up profiles and to link them with the SRIA taxonomy was implemented in ARCPORT® which evolves to an attractive, self-sustaining network, facilitating the search for AAT proposal and project partners as well as for suitable calls and topics.
