The Context
Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, has been growing rapidly in terms of inhabitants and visitors; this growth leads to increased mobility and traffic issues. The city has complex traffic streams with massive amounts of bicycles combined with cars and public transport. To manage these traffic issues there is a need for better data analysis in order to create sustainable mobility solutions. As cycling is one of the key mobility options in the city, any innovation and intervention has to take this into account. As Amsterdam wants to continuously improve its network of bike lanes and the bike experience of cyclists, the municipality is keen on gaining new insights through biking data. As part of its Bike Program, the municipality is looking for methods to integrate data and information in their policy processes.
An eye on the future
To support and improve bike mobility as main transport mode, the city of Amsterdam aims to increase the appeal of bike as main transportation mode by solving issues related to bike parking and bike-traffic- jams, encouraging virtuous behaviours in bicycle driving and prioritising interventions and budget. To reach these objectives the city of Amsterdam aims to align the mobility policies to the real needs of bike mobility, realise a data-driven decision making mechanism, strengthen the safety and comfort of cycling and encourage citizens to make sustainable mobility choices.
What are the challenges?
The city has to cope with some difficulties, such as lack of knowledge about the usage of bikes in the city, fragmentation of current bike-related policies and long decision-making processes that hinder the delivery of solutions appreciated by the citizens.
How can URBANITE help?
To help the city of Amsterdam the URBANITE project is going to provide a platform to collect, integrate and analyse data coming from different sources that supports and facilitates the daily activities of the decision-makers, offering:
The Context
The metropolitan area of Messina is one of the most extended areas of the south of Italy and the first in Sicily and counts over 620.000 citizens. The city counts over 250.000 citizens and most of them are commuters between Sicily and Calabria. The local transport of the city of Messina consists of sea transport (hydrofoil and ferry boats fleets) and land transport (buses, tramway and rail transports network), operated by public and private companies. The main issue that affects both kinds of services (sea and land transport) is the lack of facilities that can permit interoperability between departments and communication with citizens and stakeholders. In order to overcome this problem, the Municipality of Messina is investing in infrastructure and smart services for the city and citizens. In particular, the main activities are focused on vehicular access detection in LTZ (Limited Traffic Zone) and pedestrian areas, centralised traffic management based on smart lights, traffic flows and analysis, incentives to use public transportation and video surveillance.
An eye on the future
In this context the city of Messina wants to optimise mobility and integrate multimodal transport services for the city centre, organise on-demand transfer services for vulnerable people, organise Bicibus and Pedibus initiatives for green mobility, coordinate activities and communication among different departments.
To obtain these results the city of Messina aims (among the others) to increase availability and usability of bike lanes and walking paths for habitual transfer, identify secure bike and walking paths, reduce costs of transportation service, improve public transportation services with a specific focus on elderly people, students and people with disabilities, optimise coverage of public transportation related to peripheral areas, increase usability and availability of multimodal transportation means, estimate the number of available vehicles and drivers in a specific moment.
What are the challenges?
In doing so, the city of Messina has to cope with different problems; the main ones are inefficient communication among different departments, use of different data sources in different departments, difficulties in collecting data from different transportation providers, citizens unfamiliarity with IT technologies and consolidated citizens habits.
How can URBANITE help?
To help the city of Messina the URBANITE project is going to provide a platform to collect and make accessible data coming from different sources (also from different departments of the same organisation) to the decision-makers. To this aim, the platform will offer tools to facilitate the connection to data sources (also owned by third parties) and provide capabilities to share information among the decision-makers that could be involved and/or interested in the same decision-making process. The platform will also offer the possibility to
The Context
Bilbao is located right in the heart of a metropolitan area that extends along the estuary of the Nervión River and in the last 25 years has suffered an important urban transformation, from an industrial economy with heavy industry and harbour facilities to a service economy. Today, in the framework of the Intelligent Transport System Plans of the city, Bilbao’s investment has been oriented to promote public transport, user-centric information services (open data policy integrating static and dynamic standardized information), improve safety and reduce traffic congestion (new traffic management systems) and pollution.
An eye on the future
In the framework of its Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP), the city of Bilbao aims to better define and develop its mobility policies, prioritize measures for SUMP development, monitor SUMP development and evaluate the impact of mobility intervention on traffic, mobility patterns and SUMP indicators. By reaching these results the city of Bilbao would obtain a global vision of the city in terms of sustainable mobility, be able to take decisions based on updated data (being able to predict the impact resulting from applied measures), follow a more agile decisions-making process, translate measures impact into health and life quality indicators and access data coming from scattered sources that is automatically collected and integrated.
What are the challenges?
To reach its aims the city of Bilbao has to face some issues, including not harmonised data, availability of mobility patterns based on not updated data, impossibility to forecast the impact of measures/policies on mobility, non dynamic communication among stakeholders involved in the definition and development of the SUMP.
How can URBANITE help?
To help the city of Bilbao the URBANITE project is going to offer a unique point of access for mobility-related data allowing decision-makers to make decisions on the basis of the most updated information and through the setup and execution of simulations (e.g. to forecast the impact of decisions on traffic, to identify mobility patterns, etc.). In this perspective, the possibility to create charts and graphs to visualise mobility- related data or custom KPIs/indicators would allow the decision-makers to obtain at a glance the information they need to monitor mobility in the city. Since mobility-related data could come from different sources, each collected dataset could follow a different data format, so the technological solution offered by URBANITE will allow harmonisation of collected data according to common and well-defined data models. It is, also, relevant to ensure that collected data is the most updated and its analysis needs to be simplified, for instance, by pre-processing it. Furthermore, functionalities to search among collected data taking into account different criteria, would allow the decision-makers to reduce the time they spend in identifying the data they need. Finally, since different decision-makers could be involved in the decision-making process, the technological solution should facilitate the exchange of information among them.
The Context
Helsinki is the capital and most populous city of Finland and is continuously evolving and developing, changing and growing. A particular example of these changes is Jätkäsaari area. The shore area of Jätkäsaari, literally meaning ‘Dockers’ Island’, previously used for industrial and harbour purposes, is gradually being transformed into a district offering residential areas, workplaces and services. Jätkäsaari is also a growing passenger and transport harbour which is right adjacent to the centre of Helsinki. A single main road leads the traffic flow in and out of Jätkäsaari. This road feeds directly to the largest car commuting junction (70.000 cars daily) from the city centre to the western suburbs of Helsinki, creating interference. The scope of URBANITE’s Jätkäsaari use case in Helsinki is to help traffic planners to control congestion and provide them a better understanding of the big picture of mobility in the area.
An eye on the future
In this context, the City of Helsinki aims to monitor the traffic status and its advancement, investigate how urban mobility evolves, make precise traffic forecasts in accordance with the land use policies, implement new technologies and data standards, and on a high-level approach take control over mobility data. To reach these results the city of Helsinki will establish a unique view and understanding among traffic planning and urban planning, allowing the exchange of information among different departments (overcome information silos) and make data-driven decision-making a reality with the help of algorithms and data visualizations.
What are the challenges?
To reach its aims, the City of Helsinki has determined some challenges as: scattered and heterogenous data sources with versatile data governance models, obstacles in sharing and opening some data as well as data interoperability, and lack of time and competences to get deep understanding of data mainly due to the lack of automation.
How can URBANITE help?
URBANITE will establish a unified environment providing a single access point for accessing data coming from different departments leveraging tools for seamless integration to other platforms and services. The environment will support and help with basic tasks such as error detection and data quality check. In order to facilitate more fluent cooperation between different stakeholders, the environment will leverage and adopt a standard data model definition and a modular platform architecture. Prepacked simulations, data visualizations and quick setup of simple inquiries offered by URBANITE are amongst the features which will facilitate easier adoption of technological tools also for people with less technical skills.