Project

About

The acceptance of Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) solutions by citizens and future users is an element of strong interest for all stakeholders involved in the autonomous and connected vehicle sector as well as other (non-vehicle) connected services.

SINFONICA is developing efficient and innovative strategies to:

  • Engage citizens, assess the current situation on CCAM deployments

  • Collect data from 4 different context and research groups (the Groups of Interest)

  • Elaborate these data using data and people analytics with the help of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH)

  • Develop knowledge maps and share all the knowledge defined, created, and organized within the Project, through innovative tools and useful guidelines and recommendations towards capacity building for decision makers.

All the above has the overall objective of fostering inclusive CCAM deployments, based on user needs.

The Overall SINFONICA Concept

The Project follows an overall bottom-up approach to capture the mobility needs of European citizens, with special attention to the needs of vulnerable users and under-researched groups. Different segments of society will be represented and directly engaged in a participative process. This will contribute to the development of a wide inventory of knowledge organized in the form of knowledge maps.

Finally, SINFONICA will create an innovative tool – the Knowledge Map Explorer – able to exploit the knowledge by providing practical guidelines and long-term recommendations to ensure that CCAM solutions meet social inclusion criteria.

Engagement Activities

User engagement activities will be the core of the project. It is important to give voice to all individuals involved in the CCAM sector, and for this reason we have developed a dedicated engagement strategy for data collection to compose a comprehensive and exhaustive Knowledge Map. Data collection will take place in the territories of the Groups of Interest and will be qualitative and quantitative, consisting of various engagement activities. A careful analysis based on the review of existing literature on CCAM led to the selection of different categories of users and stakeholders to be involved. The three categories of people with mobility challenges, citizens and stakeholders will be consulted through interviews, focus groups and workshops, respectively. Data collection will be iterative in nature and will take place in 3 consecutive rounds. In addition, an online survey involving 500 individuals will also be conducted. The insights and information gathered will be inferred in the interactive tool named Knowledge Map Explorer.

Activities

User engagement activities will be the core of the project. It is important to give voice to all individuals involved in the CCAM sector, and for this reason we have developed a dedicated engagement strategy for data collection to compose a comprehensive and exhaustive Knowledge Map. Data collection will take place in the territories of the Groups of Interest and will be qualitative and quantitative, consisting of various engagement activities. A careful analysis based on the review of existing literature on CCAM led to the selection of different categories of users and stakeholders to be involved. The three categories of people with mobility challenges, citizens and stakeholders will be consulted through interviews, focus groups and workshops, respectively. Data collection will be iterative in nature and will take place in 3 consecutive rounds. In addition, an online survey involving 500 individuals will also be conducted. The insights and information gathered will be inferred in the interactive tool named Knowledge Map Explorer.

Objectives:

SINFONICA will build on 4 pillars, which define the strategic objectives:

Knowledge

SO1 – Strategic Objective

Create a strong knowledge base, mapping user needs and requirements, especially for people with mobility challenges, for an inclusive CCAM transport system.

Development

SO2 – Strategic Objective

Enable stakeholders to take informed decisions for social inclusive CCAM transport systems depending on their specific context.

Engagement

SO3 – Strategic Objective

Define a participatory framework to involve and engage citizens and relevant stakeholders in the design and creation of inclusive CCAM transport system.

Implementation

SO4 – Strategic Objective

Provide recommendations and guidelines for social innovative, citizen-oriented CCAM long term planning and large scale demonstrations in cities and regions.

The Knowledge map explorer

Data and information collected – together with the methodologies and strategies defined in SINFONICA – will be rephrased through the creation of technical knowledge maps. Starting from these knowledge maps, the Consortium will develop the Knowledge Map Explorer: an interactive tool to deliver tailored information, based on the profile of the user consulting it (industries actors, road operators, public administrations, researchers, academia, and stakeholders interested to the CCAM domain and its societal aspects). The Knowledge Map Explorer will be an intelligent user-friendly navigation system: depending on the type of user doing the research, the system will offer what is most appropriate for its specific need. The tool will propose guidelines and recommendation for the implementation of CCAM solutions, specifically indicated to be truly inclusive, equitable, efficient, and accessible according to each specific context.

Groups of Interest

The SINFONICA Groups of Interest (GoIs) are Living Labs where the project activities will be implemented to enact the developed methodology and co-creation processes with the stakeholders.

The specific working groups emerged around four territories: the cities of Trikala and Hamburg, the province of Noord-Brabant, and the metropolitan area of West Midlands. Each of these GoIs will be composed of representatives of public administrations, associations of vulnerable users, citizens and various stakeholders. The GoIs will be created according to methodologies that will allow to properly include the representative of all the identified categories. It is important to underline that all the activities happening in the GoI will be guided by an evaluation process that will allow understanding the correctness of the scientific research. The territories have been selected in order to guarantee different perspectives and points of view at the geographical level, at the level of digital advancement, at the level of experience and interactions with the CCAMs.

TRIKALA, GREECE

The priority of this Group of Interest related to the CCAM is to collaborate with vulnerable users and all the mobility stakeholders to understand their needs, desires and concerns, to imagine a concrete and practical CCAM solution.

NOORD-BRABANT, NETHERLANDS

The Noord-Brabant Group of Interest focus in the Project will be related to different vulnerable groups and the existing lack of transport options that hinder participation in society in the more rural parts of the provence.

HAMBURG, GERMANY

This Group of Interest will be particularly careful on involving all the relevant stakeholders in CCAM Process. To identify and collect the citizens needs for a certain service, the digital participation tool DIPAS will be used.

WEST MIDLANDS, UNITED KINGDOM

A key interest is to understand how to turn small CCAM scale pilots into sustainable, viable services going forwards. It will be interesting to understand how demonstrations can ensure a starting point for real, long-term implementations.

Methodology:

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1. Establishment Of Groups Of Interest

Starting with analysis of available knowledge about the mobility needs of different vulnerable groups, SINFONICA will create a common vocabulary for CCAM solutions and collect needs and requirements of relevant CCAM stakeholders.
A comparison of the current CCAM solutions and deployments with the mobility needs and the requirements and vision of stakeholders will follow. Each Group of Interest will address specific and different CCAM research questions.

2. Creation Of Methodologies

All partners will co-define the most appropriate engagement and data collection strategies. These activities will reflect the needs, and the characteristics of all the user categories identified as targets. An overall strategy for data collection will be devised and agreed with the GoIs for their direct engagement, contribution, and active participation. The data collection process will also involve other realities supporting SINFONICA (the groups of followers) to enrich and validate the outcomes.

3. Participatory Approach Implementation

The strategies defined in phase 2 will be tested with the Groups of Interest in their territories. During this phase, SINFONICA will constantly be monitoring the engagement and data collection processes, to evaluate and eventually optimize them, if necessary. The process will result in: a) Definition of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to be monitored; b) Implementation of engagement and information collection strategies in the GoIs; c) Periodic checks of trends to adjust the strategies

4. Information Analysis

Information collected will be analyzed also with the involvement of SSH experts for the definition of equity practices, equity indicators, limits and possibilities of CCAM solutions in terms of inclusiveness. This analysis will feed the knowledge maps creation.
A mobility assessment framework based on multi-agent simulation will be applied to those elements. A comprehensive set of operational KPIs will be derived from simulation results to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness and the operativity of the activities.

5. Tools Development

The data and knowledge collected by the Groups of Interest will form a knowledge base that will be articulated and organized into the technical knowledge maps. These will form the basis for the creation of the dataset to be consulted through the Knowledge Map Explorer. This innovative tool will make the knowledge inventory available for a wide dissemination and appropriate exploitation of the outputs obtained.

6. Guidelines And Recommendations

In addition to the Groups of Interest, SINFONICA foreseen the participation of the Groups of Followers that will be constituted by all stakeholders (public authorities, associations, industries, researchers) involved or interested in the CCAM solutions. The recommendations provided will refer to the long term period; methods to communicate with future users and citizens; large-scale demonstration projects. This will be done leveraging different disciplines (i.e. psychology, communication science and marketing).