Overview
Urban areas face increasing demands on their transportation systems, especially in developing regions with growing car ownership and rapid urban migration. Strategic mobility management is becoming the most important tool for meeting this demand. For mobility management, huge amounts of information about usage of the transportation network are needed. Traditional methods (such as roadside units to collect traffic data) and new methods (probe vehicles) have been used to provide traffic data. Integration of such data is essential in order to support planning and management of the transport network.
There was a strong need for environmental data in transport planning and management, as road traffic has been the main source of CO2 emission and air pollution especially in cities. Integration of such environmental data into existing planning tools and management schemes would bring environmental benefits.
Often information from different transport authorities was not shared previously, neither in real time nor for planning purposes. Sharing has the potential to enhance efficiency of overall urban mobility. With fast development of technologies, new data sources and new media to disseminate information have emerged. Integrating new data sources and new services has been a challenge to existing data management strategies.
The scientific and technical objectives of VIAJEO are:
- Design of an open platform with interfaces to a wide range of mobility services;
- Implementation of the open platform in Europe, and in emerging economies like China and Brazil;
- Validation of the open platform;
- Assessment of social and transport impacts of the implementation and demonstration of the open platform.
The VIAJEO project brought together various stakeholders to design, implement, and demonstrate an open platform in order to enhance efficiency of overall urban mobility. The project implemented and demonstrated the open platform in a number of carefully selected cities in Europe, China and Brazil. This open platform was able to:
- Support transport operations, planning and a wide range of traveller information services;
- Deliver dynamic information to improve the provision of transport information and traveller services through integrated traffic data collection and management;
- Deliver a solution that enables cross-modal journey planning, dynamic route guidance, effective payment access and improved personal mobility, etc.;
- Provide standardised interfaces to connect a variety of entities needed for the mobility services.
The open platform facilitated the integration of components for data management allowing integration of European and local components. The demonstration cities in Europe, China and Brazil were carefully chosen to ensure that they had a reputation as national role models, allowing results of successful demonstrations to be extended to other cities and also potentially to other countries in the respective continents.
VIAJEO involved users, traffic managers, public authorities, transport operators, equipment manufacturers, vehicle manufacturers, service providers, application and service developers, content owners and providers, and research organisations.
Funding
Results
The Viajeo project developed and implemented an open platform concept for mobility services. The open platform was able to integrate data from various data sources, e.g. fixed sensor data from transport operators, floating vehicle data from private data owners, public transport data etc. Using the integrated data, the open platform was able to improve existing mobility services and facilitate new services. The open platform was implemented in four demo cities: Athens (Greece), Sao Paulo
(Brazil), Beijing and Shanghai (China). Due to different local conditions and availability of data sources, different mobility services were implemented and
demonstrated in the four cities. During the three year period, the project carried out extensive dissemination activities.
The project organised a number of workshops in Europe, China and Brazil to engage transport stakeholders. The project also invited local stakeholders and end users to experience live demonstrations and collect their feedback on the usage of the demonstrators. The project published papers and organised special sessions at a number of international conferences. The project also published articles in transport professional magazines.
Overall, the project has achieved success in both technical development and demonstrations. Through the project activities, the consortium members of Viajeo gained comprehensive experiences in carrying out mobility services and developing transport business in Brazil and China, and also developed extensive local contacts. Such experiences and local contacts have benefited their business development since then.
Technical Implications
The Viajeo project proposed an open platform concept to facilitate the integration of different data sources, thus maximising the benefits of traffic data. Such integration could be used to improve existing traffic management and operation, fleet management, traveller information services. It also provided opportunities for new types of transport and mobility services.
Strategy targets
Innovating for the future: technology and development;
- Promoting more sustainable development
- Integrated urban mobility