On December, 1st, 2015, the Zero Emission Cities 2015 took place at Vienna City Hall. Christian Chimani, Head of AIT Mobility Department, looked into research and innovation trends of urban mobility.
The Mobile Phone as Employee
The AIT developed an App, which provides valuable assistance to all mobility decision makers: using acceleration sensors in mobile phones, this tool recognizes eight different transport modes. Reliability as determined in the testing phase has already reached over 90 percent and is likely to increase further. City and traffic planners can view mobility behavior in certain parts of the city and certain transport modes online. The more people and devices turn into data suppliers, the earlier you can react – and also forecast, in a further step, what can be expected within 30 minutes. Through digitalization, however, risks posed by malicious software will also increase, which is often generated automatically: “At present, we have to deal with approximately 400,000 viruses everyday”, says Chimani. It is a challenge for complex systems, whose resilience urgently needs to be reinforced.
As for multimodal transport, transit times and routes are an issue. The TransitBuddy could be of great help for all travelers with (heavy) luggage. It is an autonomous vehicle, which carries the luggage and navigates passengers for example from the train to the taxi.
EMILIA is a further research project with industry partners. Its goal is sustainable logistics in the city. Further development of electric drives and batteries is, therefore, also a big topic.