Insights

nuMIDAS is finalising the development of its decision support system tooling before the end of 2022. The last few months of the project were aimed at the development and implementation of all selected use cases. It has been an intensive process, together with our partners and pilot cities, to work out the details of each tool and solve the challenges we encountered. In the last newsletter, we explained the first two use cases we were developing: “Pre-planning of shared mobility services” and “Planning for parking”. Since then, we have worked on some substantial improvements for these use cases, by adding [...]

The main goal of this task is to ensure that the methods and tools identified during the development of the nuMIDAS dashboard meet the end users’ expectations and that the usability is analysed based on end-user experiences. The collection of end-user preferences and experiences from stakeholders makes it possible to investigate how the new methods and tools are perceived and improvements to be implemented in order to have a more user-friendly tool. The methodology used focuses on exploring and testing user experience (UX) methods. User-experience research methods are valuable when producing data and insights, making product and service developers [...]

Dr. Evangelos Mitsakis is an elected Research Director of CERTH‐HIT. He has participated in more than 30 EU research projects in the field of transport, as well as in numerous national and EU transport studies. His main research interests lie in transport systems modelling and optimization, Intelligent Transportation Systems and C-ITS and systems’ resilience. 1. Can you tell us about CERTH and your role in the project? The Hellenic Institute of Transport of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (HIT-CERTH) constitutes a research institution, the main objective of which is to conduct and support applied research activities in the [...]

Xavier Conill has several years of experience as a Project Manager and Consultant, and as Director of Operations in various technology companies focused on providing solutions in the telecommunications, environmental and mobility fields. He has participated in various mobility projects in Spain, in particular in the Barcelona Metropolitan area. nuMIDAS is his first European project. 1. Can you tell us about AMBi and your role in the project? AMB Informació I Serveis (AMB Informació) is a public limited company under the direct management of the public authority Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona (AMB). Its activity focuses on the provision of [...]

On the second day of the General Assembly of the nuMIDAS project, a (moderate) race took place in the streets of Milan where two teams composed of four people competed to reach two different points in the city from the same starting point. In a nutshell, each group had to choose a shared mode of transport (between kick-scooters and bicycles) to reach their assigned destination and upon return, the same group had to use the other mode of transport to return to the starting point. Team A used the ‘BikeMI’ station-based bike-sharing service on the outward journey to travel from [...]

Private vehicle use is not only a major burden on the environment, but also on the existing infrastructure, as parked cars take up a lot of public space and cause problems like congestion. By reducing the number of on-street parking spaces and promoting the shift to more public transport and shared mobility concepts, cities will become greener, safer and more sustainable. However, this conversation is not without controversy, as the exact impact of changing parking policies by reducing car parking spaces is unknown. This is exactly the issue that nuMIDAS use case 4 "Planning for parking" addresses in the city [...]

Aside from having a Master in Computer Science, Sven Maerivoet holds a PhD degree in traffic engineering, with main expertise in transportation planning models and traffic flow theory. Sven regularly participates and/or coordinates European projects (DG MOVE, DG GROWTH, FP7, Horizon 2020 / Europe, etc.), and regularly acts as reviewer for the European calls. He is also involved in (cooperative) intelligent transportation systems, road user charging assessments, connected, cooperative and automated vehicles, and he co-developed the Telraam traffic counting sensor. 1. Can you tell us about TML and your role in the project? Founded in 2002 as a [...]

Rick Overvoorde is a Traffic Engineer who joined MAPtm two years ago and has been active in the smart mobility and C-ITS field ever since, as in other topics such as intelligent traffic lights and other traffic management innovations. nuMIDAS is his first EU funded project, but certainly not his last. 1. Can you tell us about MAPTM and your role in the project? MAPtm operates in the mobility management domain as an independent partner for and between road authorities, governments, and private organisations like construction companies and mobility service providers. Besides, MAPtm visualises analytic results generated by [...]

The mobility planning sector is dealing with challenges that mainly concern safety, emissions, and providing citizens a smooth transition towards more sustainable ways of transportation. In recent years, the concept of shared mobility (e.g., bike sharing, carsharing) has been growing increasingly due to the wide range of benefits that shared mobility offers to travellers on a daily basis. One of the main advantages constitutes in cost savings given that many people can collectively fulfil their mobility needs without the need of using their personal vehicle. On top of that, the reduced use of private vehicles triggers a wide range of [...]

Valerio Mazzeschi holds a PhD in Infrastructures and Transport and a MSc in Environmental Engineering both at Sapienza University of Rome. As part of the Poliedra team since 2020, Valerio is involved in European mobility projects such as LIFE I-SharE (Innovative sharing solutions for full electric travels in small and medium size urban areas) and in technical assistance, in the mobility field, to public administrations. 1. Please tell us about Poliedra and your role in the project? Poliedra is a consortium of Politecnico di Milano working on sustainability and on participation in decision processes regarding environmental and territorial issues, passenger and freight [...]

Deliverable 2.3’s main objective is to propose a series of variables, KPIs and requirements on data for each of the nuMIDAS’ use cases. The performance indicators were selected in compliance with the recommendations of OECD and United Nations for Smart Sustainable Cities. They were selected to capture three dimensions, namely Economy, Environment and Society, and allow a municipality to reach a balance among them.  We consider a mobility ecosystem as a complex system, which is a subsystem of a city, another complex system in the sense of systems theory. Each use case involves different actors with competing interests – but [...]

Valentino Sevino holds a Degree in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano and a Master’s Degree in Environmental Engineering (Politecnico di Torino, Ecole Polytecnique Federale de Lausanne and Université Savoie Mont Blanc – Chambéry). After ten years of experience in the field of mobility and environment at the European Commission, Metropolitana Milanese and AMAT too, he has been Director of Mobility Planning Area at AMAT (Environmental Mobility and Territory Agency, City of Milan) since 2008. His fields of work are: sustainable mobility (e-mobility, shared mobility), public transport planning and regulation, pedestrian areas, cycling mobility and parking regulations, smart city, [...]

Figure 1: Business model radar for the Micromobility service The mobility field is rapidly changing due to, among others, digitalisation, as well as the uprise of small and large electric vehicles, business models, and changing stakeholder roles. More and more services combine many disciplines, which often means that services require multiple types of stakeholders to become effective. For this reason, a stakeholder analysis was performed in the context of the nuMIDAS Deliverable 2.1, in combination with a business model analysis. The analysis was performed using a Service Dominant Business Model Radar (SDBM/R) approach. The SDBM/R gives insight into which stakeholders can be [...]

André Maia Pereira is originally from Curitiba, Brazil. He holds a degree in Transportation and Vehicle Engineering at Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and received a M.S. double degree in Intelligent Transport Systems, from Linkoping University and the Czech Technical University (CTU). His participation on the European project Managing Automated Vehicles Enhances Network (MAVEN) inspired him to pursue a Ph.D. research on Transportation Systems and Technology at CTU. André is part of the Czech Technical University (CTU) team participating in nuMIDAS. 1. Please tell us about the Faculty of Transportation Sciences of the Czech Technical University in Prague and [...]

Figure 1. Intermediate UML representation of UC2 Nowadays, the mobility ecosystem has drastically changed its shape through the rise of new stakeholders and services, including the gradual penetration of connected and automated vehicle technologies, and mobility schemes relying on the principles of sharing economy. Although there exists already much research upon which many tools have been developed for supporting mobility planners and policy makers, there are still needs, which are differentiated in many thematic categories (e.g., transport planning and dynamic traffic monitoring), that require further research and development of additional tools to meet the current needs of the cities. Our [...]

Figure 1: nuMIDAS model – Service-oriented architecture    The mobility ecosystem is evolving rapidly, whereby we observe the rise of new stakeholders and services. On top of that, new services (e.g., shared mobility, electric infrastructure management, and MaaS) operate in an environment in which traditional services (e.g., public transport, last mile logistics, and travel demand modelling) are well established. The enormous amount of gathered data by municipalities, service providers, and other related or unrelated parties is the key to the ability to make these complex choices. Successfully integrating all these various technologies and solutions for designing the transport system and policies remains a challenge. The first specialised task of the nuMIDAS project was the state-of-the-art assessment of traditional research [...]