Supporting the decision-making in URBAN transformation with the use of dIsruptive TEchnologies

Project Information

URBANITE

Grant agreement ID: 870338

DOI

10.3030/870338

Project closed

EC signature date 23 March 2020

Start date 1 April 2020

End date 30 June 2023

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 3 954 062,50

EU contribution

€ 3 954 062,50

Coordinated by

FUNDACION TECNALIA RESEARCH & INNOVATION
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - URBANITE (Supporting the decision-making in URBAN transformation with the use of dIsruptive TEchnologies)

Reporting period: 2021-04-01 to 2023-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Urban mobility faces more significant long-term uncertainty and complexity generated by the demand for growth in urban environments and the pressure for more sustainable models. On the other hand, the accelerated technological development in the transport modes and business models. These new technologies, business models and trends are changing the landscape of mobility planning in cities, adding new challenges. All these challenges require new advances in the planning processes, aiming to help public administrations and policy makers to a better understanding of this new context, supporting them in making policy–related decisions. Now, the traditional solutions are no longer valid for this situation and therefore, disruptive technologies to support policymakers arise. This opportunity also brings with it specific challenges to favor the acceptance by users of the results obtained by applying these technologies.
The objective of URBANITE is to analyze, by means of a co-creative approach, the impact, trust and attitude of civil servants, citizens and other stakeholders with respect to the integration of disruptive technologies such as AI, DSS, big data analytics and predictive algorithms in a data–driven decision-making process. To this end, URBANITE will provide recommendations, pathways and toolkits (both ICT-based such as data management platform and DSS, and non-ICT such as co-creation activities and social-related assets) in the field of urban transformation and validated by piloting mobility use-cases.
The target users of the URBANITE ecosystem are civil servants although the end beneficiaries of the policies derived from the use of URBANITE will be the citizens. The private sector, associations and civil servants will be brought together, in all stages of the project, in co-creation activities to jointly develop policies that affect mobility concerns. Through the action, the relevant local stakeholders will be able to share, through the innovative concept of Social Policy Labs, their trust towards URBANITE’s disruptive technologies
URBANITE will pilot its solution in 4 municipalities across Europe, namely in the Netherlands (Amsterdam), Spain (Bilbao), Finland (Helsinki) and Italy (Messina).

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

Social impact of disruptive technologies
• The set up a participatory process involving policy makers and the local stakeholders around the urban mobility.
• Provision and deployment of the Urbanite Forum an online platform supporting the collaboration.
Data Management Platform
• Specification of a data models based on the data source analysis and existing model standards. Conceptualization, design, and implement prototypes of the components.
• Implementation and integration of harvesters and data pipelines
Algorithms and simulation techniques for decision - makers
• Develop and deploy tools for big data exploration in the domain of urban mobility.
• Analysis of the harvested data and adaption of methods to data available.
• Implementation of the Data Analysis modules: Traffic Prediction Module, Bike Analysis Module, Bike Trajectory Module, Noise Computation Module, OD Matrix from accounts
• Slight improvement of the user interface of the widgets that allow data exploration.
URBANITE ecosystem integration and DevOps
• Definition of the strategy to identify the requirements of the URBANITE ecosystem.
Definition of the URBANITE ecosystem architecture, benchmarking of exiting tools.
Definition of the DevOps integration strategy, support methodology and tools and single GUI . Preparation of the supporting infrastructure to carry out the deployment strategy.
• Deploy the different components over the four environments
Use cases
• Identification of the requirements, needs and canvas of the use cases and to the definition of the evaluation framework.
• Provide a mechanism for managing the identity tasks
• Implementation of the use cases, verticalization, storytelling and custom dashboards.
• Review of the evaluation framework and evaluation criteria
Ethics requirements
• Provisioning of general guidance concerning ethical issues of URBANITE project, supporting consortium an ethical and privacy approach along with the different activities.
• Supporting the consortium with an ethical and privacy approach along the different activities.

Dissemination results: Brochures: 4, Scientific Publications (papers, conferences): 3 / 18, Posters: 2, Demos: 13, Newsletters: 3, Events organized: 5, Publications: 3. Organized a final communication event. The project deploys a webpage and groups/channels in: Linkedin, Twitter, Sharepoint and Youtube. Activities on collaboration with other projects.

The main results obtained from the exploitation perspective are the following:
• Released the Business Model including cost analysis and the analysis of potential revenue streams in different URBANITE forecasting scenarios.
• Joint Exploitation plan and the draft agreement for the creation of URBANITE Alliance. Seven partners have signed the Letter of Intent.

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)

Beyond the state of the art:
• Recommendations and lessons learned for any public administration aiming at using similar disruptive technologies.
• Automatic data management pipelines that can be scheduled to carry out the complete process of harvesting, curation, storage and retrieval managing heterogenous datasources.
• Conformal Algorithm is being used in computing the confidence interval for the traffic prediction.
• Traffic simulations can be evaluated and city specific KPIs calculated automatically, allowing multi-attribute comparison of simulated mobility policy changes.
• Bike Safety factor computation based on the infrastructure information and completing with the actual accidents stored.
• A multistep approach to support the definition of the use cases and the elicitation of requirements, and the approach and criteria for their evaluation.

The path of SoPoLabs was characterised by a progressive involvement of stakeholders aimed at identifying problems in the urban mobility and priorities for the public administrations and citizens. Different targets and size of stakeholders were involved, accordingly to the type of discussion faced and the necessary skills for active contributions. This made it possible to gradually introduce the tools and potential opportunities to the specific use case ecosystems, to explore trust in the use of disruptive technologies in the decision-making process.
The social impact of the SoPoLab experience is evident in the new way to involve professionals, communities, institutions and citizens in planning future solutions for our cities, increasing transparency and collaboration spirit. This enables a stronger sense of belonging to the same community and increases enthusiasm and appreciation for the public management of our cities. Another social impact is related to the wide dissemination and promotion of technologies due to spreading of new digital services. The disruptive technologies endorsed in the Urbanite project will affect the next generation of urban services, which will be provided to end users through digital means.
The social impact derived from these activities highlighted how stakeholders and municipalities are interested in these new opportunities. In particular, the experimentation carried out by Urbanite and the SoPoLabs has shown how these tools can be useful in broadening the audience, not only decision-makers, but also citizens.

URBANITE Vision

General Approach