Overview
SIMON (asSIsted Mobility for Older aNd impaired users) was a demonstration project with four large scale pilots in Madrid, Parma, Lisbon and Reading, with the aim of using Information Communication Technology (ICT) services to promote the independent living and social participation of mobility impaired people in the context of public parking areas and multiple transport modes.
It focused on the reduction of fraud in the pre-ICT implementation of the European Parking Badge for mobility impaired people, used in public parking areas, and the use of specific multimodal navigation solutions for elderly and people with disabilities.
The objectives of SIMON were:
- To propose new mobility schemes which support the access of elderly and disabled people to the same opportunities as other citizens.
- To implement a web platform as an open communication channel with citizens, including specific navigation features which support mobility disabled people.
- To take advantage of the existing mobility infrastructures in cities, developing an open reference architecture which integrate different components to offer new services to mobility impaired people.
- To provide IT solutions for specifically targeted end-users: mobile applications for navigation and e-ID; smart cards for e-ticketing and e-ID; or combination of both when required. Always with a focus on usability and user-friendliness.
- To provide authorities with the capability to promote inclusion policies –e.g. coordinated advantageous transport tariffs - whilst fighting against fraud –e.g. univocal identification of the user of the disabled parking badge.
- To propose the specifications for an IT EU parking card for disabled people and to contribute to its standardisation at a European level.
SIMON's final objective was the promotion of the independent living and societal participation of mobility impaired people through the adoption of technology to provide users with specific navigation information and access-rights management solutions.
This was possible thanks to the integration of existing services with the SIMON specific solutions for validation and multimodal navigation. Once the reference architecture and the information model had been defined, and the ICT services and applications implemented, the last stage in the SIMON preparation phase finished with the deployment and adaptation of these ICT services in each of the pilot cities: Madrid (Spain), Lisbon (Portugal), Parma (Italy) and Reading (United Kingdom). Thus, the services were instantiated to provide the functionalities required by each of the cities.
The SIMON system integrated four main services:
- SIMON SAYS provides the core identity management functions to enable the validation and verification of a blue badge holder when parking at a reserved parking space.
- SIMON BOOKS provides the functions to determine the availability of reserved parking spots.
- SIMON OPENS provides the functionality to establish access to urban restricted areas.
- SIMON ANSWERS provides the functions to enable multi-modal navigation.
This set of services fed into the SIMON mobile apps, which have been used in the pilot phase: SIMON LEADS for the mobility impaired citizens and SIMON CONTROLS for the enforcement officers.
Funding
Results
Pilots have been designed to form a scalable base for long term deployment and this has been achieved at two levels. On the one hand, SIMON pilots already consider accessibility as a long-term commitment with full political and institutional backing; on the other, the consortium has produced a Roadmap for deployment at European level, where milestones, barriers and actions to overcome them are identified in order to make SIMON a fully deployed reality within the next decade.
The project results in short:
1. Common architecture and data models for mobility inclusive smart cities.
2. The SIMON platform, which integrates with different mobility infrastructures in cities.
3. SIMON Mobile app, available for Android and iOS (available for free in the Play Store and Apple Store).
4. SIMON Authority Operator Tool: the web-based tool that allows the public authority or mobility operator to carry out the access rights management.
5. The specification of an ICT-enhanced EU parking card for the disabled.
6. A hybrid indoor-outdoor navigation model, which incorporates accessibity options for those with mobility impairements (including visual impairements).