Mobility Innovations for a New Dawn in Sustainable (European) Transport Systems

Project Information

MIND-SETS

Grant agreement ID: 640401

DOI

10.3030/640401

Project closed

EC signature date 20 November 2014

Start date 1 December 2014

End date 31 May 2017

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 1 755 558,75

EU contribution

€ 1 755 558,75

Coordinated by

ISTITUTO DI STUDI PER L'INTEGRAZIONE DEI SISTEMI - SOCIETA'COOPERATIVA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MIND-SETS (Mobility Innovations for a New Dawn in Sustainable (European) Transport Systems)

Reporting period: 2016-06-01 to 2017-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

MIND-SETS is a Coordination and Support Action financed by DG Research under the H2020 Framework Programme. The project started on 1 December 2014 and has a duration of 30 months.
The MIND-SETS project provides a new approach to understanding mobility as part of the overall changing lifestyles of different population groups across the diversity of European culture. The project will assess how we can better understand mobility at the level of lifestyle patterns, set against social, economic and technological trends: in short – what are people’s mobility MIND-SETS across Europe? This will involve a new approach that brings together mainstream sociologists, environmental psychologists and economists together with sustainable mobility and travel behaviour specialists as well as experts in social, technological and ITC trends: a full multi-disciplinary, new type of team to assess mobility issues. The aim is to change the ‘professional mind-set’ of mobility stakeholders involved not only in planning and policy but also those in the private sector designing and providing new mobility products and services into the European marketplace.
To reach these objectives, MIND-SETS collects and coordinates existing knowledge on the various factors influencing mobility behavior, from the perspective of different disciplines. The new ‘MIND-SETS approach’ is then developed as a decision support instrument, in the form of guidelines to assist the range of investment decisions facing stakeholders in the mobility arena. The guidelines, covering all modes from shoes to aircraft, will provide an understanding of the relative importance of different drivers and barriers that influence the role mobility plays in the lifestyles of Europeans, and to provide an understanding as to how this is changing in the future. In this process, it will advise stakeholders on primary data and intelligence requirements or available secondary sources to assist mobility decision-making practice. The guidelines, as well as all of the supporting intelligence gathered and processed on the way, will be stored in the MIND-SETS Knowledge Centre, which will be an interactive tool providing a simple logic for stakeholders to access while making mobility decisions.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the coordination part of the project (M1- M18), the MIND-SETS team has been working to coordinate what is known about mobility across a wide range of disciplines, bringing new concepts and ideas into the transport area. The consortium has crossed many disciplines in this process (economics, social science, psychology, consumer behaviour analysis), resulting in a successful cross-fertilisation process, culminating in an innovative approach to looking at mobility - the MIND-SETS approach. The application of the MIND-SETS logic to four concrete examples (automation, inclusion, virtual mobility and seamless mobility) and the subsequent validation of this logic through local focus groups and expert consultations ensured that the approach undertaken by MIND-SETS truly reflected the opinions and experiences of both high-level stakeholders and European citizen.
The results of the first phase of the project are embedded in two key deliverables: the coordinated understanding of the role of mobility in the changing lifestyles of Europeans is reported in the publication A New Vision on European Mobility (Deliverable 2.1) while the publication “Professional mindsets regarding mobility behaviour” (Deliverable 2.2) offers valuable insights on what is lacking in current decision-making processes and how the MIND-SETS vision can help to make better informed decisions.
During the last part of the project (M19-M30), the MIND-SETS team has focused on the planned ‘support actions’. As a result of a continuous internal innovation management process, and engagement with external experts and stakeholders through a series of dedicated exploitation and dissemination events, the MIND-SETS project has successfully fulfilled its obligations as stated in the original DoA.
As a legacy of the project, the MIND-SETS Knowledge Centre (MSKC) available at www.mobilitybehaviour.eu offers a step by step guidance to incorporate the MIND-SETS vision when taking mobility decisions. The strengths of the MSKC are that they provide personalized support to users – whether the user is an individual, a social group or the innovator of a specific mobility product or service- in the form of a wide series of ‘insights’ combined with an interactive Mobility Footprint tool.
The MIND-SETS insights are an invaluable tool for gaining a fuller understanding of current trends and how these will affect mobility in the future. On topics ranging from Green Mobility to Big Data, the insights provide a general overview of the situation and some key points, followed by a more in-depth analysis and suggestions for further reading.
The MIND-SETS Mobility Footprint is an interactive tool that visually maps how likely it is that a mobility product or service will be accepted by a selected target market – enabling developers to “test” their concept and identify how a product fits different mobility markets, reflecting the different technological, generational and societal changes that have taken place over the last few decades.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Over the last 40 years, much has been learned about the travel behaviour of different groups of society. We know, for example the social distribution of the types of journeys made, their mode, timing, length and duration. We have knowledge of the impacts that greater mobility and accessibility have had on the volume of mobility in recent decades, and the nature of that growth. We have knowledge of the impacts of mobility deprivation on the activity chances of individuals. However, we still understand little of the underlying processes that drive mobility decisions; what factors affect people’s propensity to change behaviour.
MIND-SETS has coordinated knowledge on these previous ideas and evidence on mobility behaviour, and used this as the building blocks for a new vision. The experts involved in the validation process have described the approach taken as a ‘Breath of fresh air’ in the mobility field – ‘turning our current practice on its head’. The approach taken to look within disciplinary silos and pull together a rich and diverse intelligence on mobility has certainly paid rewards. This new intelligence has been tailored for exploitation to the diverse mobility stakeholder groups – planners, policy-makers, citizens, communities and their representatives, and new product and service providers in the mobility sector. The mobility industry is the largest industry in the World and one that is undergoing a paradigm shift: a new World of mobility possibilities is opening up with new innovations emerging every month, seemingly without boundaries. MIND-SETS took up this challenge to inform and stimulate this new mobility arena with tailored insights for the target groups, embedded within a MIND-SETS Knowledge Centre – a practical one-stop-shop for mobility decision-support. MIND-SETS is a human-based approach that provides the mobility industry with the knowledge of how people are using physical and virtual mobility to shape new diverse and radically lifestyles from what has gone before; and how their products, services, plans and policies can be best tailored to support growth, sustainability and inclusion.

MIND-SETS poster