Overview
Many projects funded by mobility-focused grants have shown that coordination and sharing models can yield positive effects in the context of mobility. A common problem of these approaches, though, is that they tend to result in isolated applications the users of which cannot cooperate across system boundaries. Thus, each new approach faces the problem of acquiring the critical mass of users.
The Web of Needs (WoN) infrastructure would allow to connect those "islands", enabling new ways of spontaneous collaboration between users of different systems. This is demonstrated for the cooperation concepts designed in two past MdZ explorations, Urban Loading - Ladezonenmanagement im urbanen Raum and ÖKO-LOG Regionale Lebensmittel nachhaltig liefern. In addition to that, the resulting architecture is analysed with respect to security and privacy issues.
The project Urban Loading resulted in a concept for self-organized, coordinated use of urban loading zones. To that end, loading zones are represented geographically in an IT-System, if available, sensor technology is used to detect if zones are currently free or used. Delivering companies can find free loading zones and announce their interest in using a zone to all others, which helps planning more efficient delivery routes.
The project ÖKO-LOG analysed the delivery chains for locally produced food from the producer (e.g., organic farm) to the consumer (restaurants, shops, private consumption). The focus is on replacing individual deliveries done by car with inter-modal transport chains consisting of public transport, crowd delivery, and last-mile distribution by cargo bicycle. CoShA produces a concept for realizing these models on the basis of WoN. This allows users and resources of both applications to interact, such that Urban Loading zones can be used by ÖKO-LOG transports. The vision of this research is to create an inter-operable open source IT-solution that can be used as a starting point for a wide variety of sharing and coordination systems in the context of mobility.