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Enhancing Intermodality of Content, Personalised Information and Functionality of WISETRIP Network of Journey Planning Engines

Final Report Summary - ENHANCED WISETRIP (Enhancing Intermodality of Content, Personalised Information and Functionality of WISETRIP Network of Journey Planning Engines)

Executive Summary:
The Enhanced WISETRIP project (Contract Nr 285014) is a Collaborative project co-financed by EC FP7 programme under Theme GC.SST.2011.7-5 “Integrated intermodal traveller services”. The goal of Enhanced WISETRIP was to advance in multiple directions the mobility service platform which has been delivered by the predecessor project WISETRIP that provided personalized multi-modal travel information sourced from connected variant journey planners. Enhanced WISETRIP attempts to integrate Journey Planning engines to form a unified intermodal planner and address important needs of the international traveller including the provision of personalized information before and during the trip, under different usage scenarios. To this end the project developed and validated an innovative service platform that provides and personalises multi-modal travel information sourced from connected variant journey planners and is accessible by travellers through various mobile or fixed devices before and during the journey.
Project Context and Objectives:
The Enhanced WISETRIP project aims to bring new possibilities for planning, booking and travelling multimodal journeys adapted to all user needs, multiple trip criteria, environmental impact and personal preferences. To manage unexpected scenarios, the project has realised integration of real-time and non real-time data sources based upon efficient communications and decision management mechanism for traveller alerting and trip redesign. It is also focused on green planning of multimodal international trips, through its unique mixture of features, which are:
• Inclusion of a wide grid of criteria that form the basis of variant trip strategies and govern selection process either at planning or at trip redesign phase. Criteria include CO2 footprint, elderly and disabled preferences, typical factors (time, cost, hops) and various user-specific options.
• Acknowledging user requirements by genuinely addressing door-to-door journey planning; considering real-time event data and information on extraordinary conditions (strikes, disasters, extreme weather); and offering the possibility of integrated ticketing
• Use of the most advanced desktop and mobile interfaces,
• Expansion of the geographical coverage and of the number of transport modes

Project Results:
The Enhanced WISETRIP project developed and validated an innovative service platform that provides and personalises multi-modal travel information sourced from connected variant journey planners and is accessible by travellers through various mobile or fixed devices before and during the journey. The main demonstrator of the project results is the WISETRIP web interface, currently available under www.wisetrip.travel able to get requests and provide multimodal trip answers, for a limited number of international and national routes (Greece, Finland, UK, Italy and China).

The main results are shown through the description of the main workpackages.

Integrating Different Transport Systems into the Core Network of Journey Planners (WP3): WISETRIP content has been expanded after the completion of integration of the following Journey Planners:
- 9292 Integration
- EMT (Madrid Planner) covering bus operation services in the municipality of Madrid.
- Journey Planner for the Region of Toscana in co-operation with Co-Cities Project
- In-Time /Cocities Integration
- Swiss Public Data API Integration
More integration has been implemented for Vienna, Prague and Baidu JP (China). WISETRIP international network model has being re-designed in order to be able to combine multiple international transport modes. Apart from the inclusion of the relative international air routes and Adriatic Ferries, the inclusion of static rail routing data has been also completed. Additionally, car routing is possible, combined with public transport modes for the Region of Toscana.

Itinerary Planning Algorithmic and Data Management Advancements (WP4): The Enhanced WISETRIP system provides the user with the capability to: i) handle and resolve various journey contingencies including delays, cancellations, or mistakes made by the traveller during journey execution, ii) incorporate mobility constraints for various categories of users (e.g. intermediate stops, accessibility constraints), iii) choose among multimodal international travel options taking into account their performance in terms of travel time, number of hops and CO2 emissions. The provided algorithm supports the newly developed system functionalities in order to implement the enhanced journey planning features that will offer a wide range of viable and efficient multimodal itineraries taking into account the needs and requirements of travellers for planning and executing their journey. Main items of work include:
1. the development and integration of the carbon footprint calculation algorithm,
2. the integration of web services that correspond to the real-time data mechanism and the real-time operators’ events, so that to assure real-time data acquisition, identification of trip disruptions and management of the process of real-time redesigning trips facing disruptions,
3. the integration of the algorithms that solve the multi-criteria, multimodal, static and dynamic itinerary planning models. Algorithms deliver a computational engine solving any static or dynamic itinerary planning problem arising during the pre-trip or the on-trip phase of a journey,
4. the implementation as a proof of concept of the in-door planning algorithm that support elderly and disabled services.

Advanced Personal Interface (WP5): The objective of this WP is to provide the EnhancedWISETRIP platform with the necessary front-end interfacing mechanisms so that the realised services can be distributed and presented to the end users through fixed or mobile devices connected to the Internet, before and during the journey. The result is the developed user-friendly and easy-to-use combined transportation information system, which accompanies the user starting from the search of a route and the time of his/her departure, until the arrival to the final destination. The user of WISETRIP has access to this information through multiple interfaces and specifically through a fixed web interface (web portal), a mobile interface (mobile device & mobile web-browser), and a messaging interface (mobile device & SMS). Compared to the former WISETRIP interface, the newly-developed provides the ability for the user to select the personalized services section, where he/she can select services based on specific user preferences and trip selection. Main parts of the Web User Interface include:
• the public journey planner section (simple or advanced trip search), where each user specifies his/her query for a specific trip and the associated criteria,
• the profile section (user registration), where the user configures or edits his/her personal criteria
• the trip services section (available only for registered users), where the user specifies the trip(s) for which he/she wants to receive real-time notifications and alerts.
• the trip contingency section where the user specifies a contingency trip for the international segment of his journey and
• the integrated ticket section where the user books and registers his tickets for a specific trip.

Potential Impact:
Apart from the events during the first period of the project (including TRA2012, 18th ITS Orlando and 19th ITS Vienna) the project has been presented through its participation to important events such as Transportation Research Board (2013), Holyrood Conference on Smart Sustainable Transport (2013), ICT Event (Vilnius 2014), TEDx Event (Heraklion,2014) and Transforum project ITS workshop (Estonia 2014). The project web site and a brochure have been constructed, emphasizing on the extended WISETRIP characteristics. Many newsletters have been delivered and sent out to the extended External Users Group base which counts more than 120 members. The dissemination strategy builds on the approach used in the initial WISETRIP Project, while new and emerging communication tools are also included.

- Newsletters: Newsletters have been produced and distributed to stakeholders including External User Group Members. All newsletters are available at the project web site. The first project e-newsletter was published at May 2011 and provided a background to the Enhanced WISETRIP project, an overview of the targeted content exposure and a summary of the gaps and functions that will be highlighted by Enhanced WISETRIP project. The second e-newsletter was released at October 2012, summarising the TEDA Survey organised to identify Traveller Needs and Trip Strategies, the methodology that will be followed for the calculation of CO2 emissions and an overview of the new Journey Planners that will be integrated within WISETRIP platform. The 3rd e-newsletter, published at February 2013, focused at the International Journey Planning needs and functions and presented the journey planning modelling issues and the relative algorithm solutions that will be addressed within the project. The project web site was also promoted by the newsletter.
- Project Brochure: The project brochure was initially produced in November 2012, yet it was updated in May 2014 in order to be aligned with the delivered user interface and the revised consortium. Over 1000 leaflets have been distributed.
- External User Group (EUG): The External User Group has been updated with new expert users joining in the list.
- Conferences and Events: Participation to conferences and events throughout the project lifecycle has been considered as very important for the dissemination of Enhanced WISETRIP. As regards to the second project period partners participated to the following events:
1. 18th ITS World Congress, Venue & Date: Orlando, 16-20 October 2011, Participation: Forthnet – Enhanced WISETRIP Project Presentation
2. TRA 2012 Conference, Venue & Date: Athens, 23-26 April 2012, Participation: Forthnet, AUEB and ETRA – 3 research papers presented
3. DANTE Project Meeting - Digital Agenda for New Tourism Approach in European Rural and Mountain Areas (INTERREG IVC), Venue & Date: Heraklion, 17-18 May 2012, Participation: Forthnet – Presentation “Enhanced Tourist Experience - Best Practices & R&D orientations”
4. LATSIS Symposium on Quantitative Methods in Transportation Systems, Venue & Date: Lausanne, 4-7 September 2012, Participation: AUEB – Presentation of itinerary planning models in Enhanced WISETRIP
5. Interferry Conference 2012, Venue & Date: Dubai, 21-24 October 2012, Participation: Forthnet – Presentation “Modal Integration and Services Composition”
6. 19th ITS World Congress, Venue & Date: Vienna, 22-26 October 2012, Participation: Forthnet – Enhanced WISETRIP Project Stand in the Exhibition Area (EC Stand)
7. National Verkeerskundecongres 2012, Venue & Date: Netherlands, 31 October 2012, Participation: TNO – Presentation: “Criteria on which travellers choose their mode, differences between different groups of travellers”
8. Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington D.C. USA, January 13-17, 2013 (TNO).
Additionally, Enhanced WISETRIP was present at the final meeting of Enhanced WISETRIP was hosted by project partner Polis in Brussels on 29 August 2014. It was attended by some 20 people external to the project. The meeting agenda encompassed presentations from project partners on the results of the projects various research, development and demonstration activities, notably the innovative functions developed. A live demonstration of the trip planner was made and the evaluation results of the demonstration were also presented for the first time.

List of Websites:

public website address: www.wisetrip-eu.org
enhancedWISETRIP platform: www.wisetrip.travel

Manolis Stratakis
Forthnet SA
Innovation Department
tel: 00302810391200