Thematic Knowledge Exchange Seminar on Data-Driven Mobility sparks pan-European conversation between cities
In line with previous SCALE-UP Knowledge Exchange Seminars (see here), aimed at sharing experiences, policies, techniques and knowledge across the three project Urban Nodes (Turku, Antwerp and Madrid), a final seminar was held online on 22 June 2022.
After an introduction by the host of the seminar, the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), each of the cities shared some of their pains and gains when it comes to various aspects of ever increasing amounts of data collected from mobility and transport measures and services:
Collection, ownership & access restrictions;
MaaS applications;
Cybersecurity & privacy protection;
Multi-level governance models, which support but also hinder data-driven mobility analysis;
Urban Vehicle Access Restrictions (UVARs);
Central data collection & processing units.
While the cities of Antwerp and Madrid already have advanced strategies and in the case of the former even a dedicated department at hand to manage data collected by the smart city, Turku highlighted the need for such a dedicated department unit. Although the city has recently launched a multimodal, accessible and all-inclusive Service Map, further efforts to harmonise and manage mobility data are foreseen.
All cities are quite advanced when it comes to the protection of privacy of end users and stakeholders through either not working with real-time data (which is already processed & prepared for analysis through ML algorithms) or simply clustering data into larger clusters.
In order to create UVARs which are not only viable but also very effective, both Antwerp and Madrid analysed mobility behaviour upfront and put in place various different restrictions, especially in the city centres:
Restrictions for combustion engine powered vehicles in the city centre / pedestriasation of the centre;
Speed limits for shared mobility offerings in high-risk areas (such as squares, pedestrian zones);
Dynamic zoning for shared offerings.
In the case of Antwerp, the municipality is participating in a City Data Standard for Mobility (CDS-M) project to combine in total 5 different mobility data projects, stakeholder open source data and end users:
Madrid has launched its’ own Madrid 360 strategy for sustainable mobility, which unites various different efforts to create a safer, environmentally friendlier and safer mobility and transport landscape for the entire metropolitan area:
Overall, the seminar proved to be extremely helpful in exchanging not only past wins with each other, but also current projects and problems. By highlighting how different universal challenges are addressed across the continent, inspiration can be drawn for own local, regional or even national strategies and policy changes.
Additional resources can be found here:
Micromobility management for cities (Numo);
Author: Friederike L. Kühl (STA)