Sustainable transport despite Corona, climate or structural change?

Is resilient and sustainable transport possible in the future despite the challenges posed by pandemics, climate and structural change? The MOTUS research project is dedicated to this question. Over the next three years, it will investigate what measures municipalities can take to make their urban transport systems sustainable and resilient even when disruptive events occur.

At the end of the project, a simulation platform should exist that will enable municipal decision-makers, for example, to run through various disruptive scenarios for their transport system (urban space) and derive suitable countermeasures. After all, only those who understand their transport system holistically can make a targeted contribution to achieving the sustainable development goals of the United Nations, in particular the requirement for safe, resilient and sustainable cities. MOTUS is being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) as part of the mFUND innovation initiative with a total of around 800,000 euros.

Interdisciplinary consortium reflects diversity of transport modes

MOTUS is backed by the TU Dresden and the University of Kassel, two research-intensive institutions with a total of four professorships involved: the professorships for traffic control systems and process automation, for traffic ecology and for automotive engineering at the "Friedrich List" Faculty of Transportation Sciences at the TU Dresden, and the professorship for bicycle traffic and local mobility at the University of Kassel. The interdisciplinary project consortium is complemented by the SME "Teralytics", which already carried out extensive and meaningful evaluations of mobile phone data for the Robert Koch Institute during the Corona pandemic.

Disruptive events change behavior

Corona is demonstrably turning everyday life and thus the mobility behavior of many people upside down: Familiar routes are being dropped and more suitable alternatives are being sought for hitherto established means of transport. It is therefore not surprising that, for example, the first supply bottlenecks are occurring for new bicycles and that municipalities have introduced pop-up bike lanes at short notice. But the car has also come back into focus for many road users in these times due to the low risk of contagion.

Changes in mobility behavior are leading to changes in traffic flows. These are directly related to road safety and eco-balance, although the exact interactions are still unexplored. What is certain, however, is that urban transport systems will not only have to cope with such changes at present, but in all likelihood even more frequently in the future. In addition, challenges arise from climate change-related scenarios, such as those observed to a very extreme extent in the Ahr Valley this year, and from structural change-related scenarios in the lignite mining regions. MOTUS aims to find initial answers to these challenges by developing a catalog of measures to help municipal decision-makers make their own transportation systems sustainable and resilient.

Model municipalities wanted: Applications open now!

The simulation platform developed in MOTUS and the catalog of measures derived from it will be based on a wide variety of traffic data: Be it mobile phone, drone, detector, accident or survey data from urban traffic systems. Not only newly collected data sets will be used, but also data sets that were already collected before and during the Corona pandemic. Since MOTUS is explicitly aimed at municipal decision-makers, two selected model municipalities are to be included in the development from the outset and will thus be able to benefit directly from the research results. If you are interested in playing a role as a "model municipality", municipal decision-makers can contact the MOTUS consortium with immediate effect. Preference will be given to municipalities from the lignite mining regions with an urban transportation system and a willingness to make traffic data available for research purposes.

For more information, including participation in the project kick-off meeting on Jan. 26, 2022, please contact Maximilian Bäumler (see contact below).

About the BMVI's mFUND:

As part of the mFUND innovation initiative, the BMVI has been funding data-based research and development projects for digital and connected mobility 4.0 since 2016. Project funding is supplemented by active professional networking between stakeholders from politics, industry, administration and research and by making open data available on the mCLOUD portal. For more information, please visit:

www.mfund.de

Project contact person for MOTUS at the University of Kassel

Prof. Angela Francke
Head of Department Cycling and Local Mobility
Phone: +49 561 807-7703

E-Mail: angela.francke[at]uni-kassel[dot].de

Project contact for MOTUS at the TU Dresden

Dipl.-Ing. Maximilian Bäumler, MBA
Chair of Automotive Engineering
Faculty of Transportation Sciences "Friedrich List"
Phone: 0351-463-43105
E-mail: maximilian.baeumler[at]tu-dresden[dot]de

Press contact:

Sebastian Mense
University of Kassel
Communications, Press and Public Relations
Tel.: +49 561 804-1961
E-mail: presse[at]uni-kassel[dot]de