Large scale pilots test a new system to support mobility impaired people

The SIMON consortium has announced the beginning of the large scale pilots that will take place in the cities of Madrid, Lisbon and Parma to demonstrate the solutions proposed by the project. SIMON is a demonstration oriented project that aims at promoting the independent living and societal participation of mobility impaired people in the context of public parking areas and multiple transport modes, through the adoption of specific navigation information and access-rights management solutions.

To do so, it integrates different ICT solutions that enable users to significantly improve their mobility, promoting their access to the available information, providing new tools and ensuring management of their access rights safely.
The project is 'addressing two major milestones: the reduction of fraud in the use of the European parking card, through ICT solutions (smart cards and mobile devices); and multimodal navigation-specific solutions for the elderly and disabled: routes, accessibility information, incidents, etc.,' commented Eva Maria Muñoz from ETRA I+D, the company coordinating the project.

One of the applications that has been developed is SIMON LEADS: a mobile app that will provide people with disabilities different mobility, parking and transportation services. 'The idea is that through this application users can find accessible routes and activate validation mechanisms to access restricted areas of the city or parking spaces reserved for the disabled with all the guarantees. All these applications can both improve the mobility of users and facilitate the management and control by transport companies and municipalities'.

The SIMON system also features specific applications for parking controllers, so that they can clearly identify users who commit fraud and provide information on available parking spaces for people with reduced mobility.
Finally, SIMON will have a management and administration system aimed at mobility service providers (transport companies, municipalities) to enable real-time information to improve and optimise the services offered to citizens.

The modernisation of the European parking card and the provision of several services to assist mobility are therefore the main pillars of this project in which seven partners are actively involved: the company ETRA I+D (Spain), the Institute of Biomechanics of Valencia (Spain), Locoslab GmbH (Germany), Empresa Pública Municipal de Mobilidade e Estacionamento de Lisboa (Portugal), the Madrid City Council (Spain), Consorcio Regional de Transportes de Madrid (Spain) and Infomobility SpA (Italy). To complement and reinforce the role of the partners, a large User Group was defined to be actively involved in the system development and pilot testing, involving different bodies at national (CERMI, UDP, ACAPO, ANMIC, Lisbon city council) and European (AGE, POLIS, EPA) levels.

The participation of all these entities will be crucial in the coming months as the pilot phase, which now begins in Madrid, Lisbon and Parma, aims to involve up to 5 000 users, among them people with disabilities, seniors, relatives, workers and public services managers. This ambitious goal will enable the deployment of all the services covered by the project so as to demonstrate the utility of SIMON in real contexts and enable its implementation in Europe.

Parole chiave

assisted mobility; transport; parking card

Paesi

Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal