How can data help make urban mobility more sustainable?

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Each year Climate-KIC, an initiative of the EU’s European Institute of Innovation and Technology, organises an international hackathon seeking to find novel ways to facilitate transitions to a zero carbon economy. This year 145 locations hosted ‘climathons’ and over 600 solutions to locally defined challenges were conceptualised.

Last week I was part of the team at Open Source Lab hosting one of the four hackathon challenges for the Berlin event: 'Climate Innovation to Facilitate Berlin's Transformation Towards a Green Future.' Open Source Lab challenged participants to find solutions that utilize or create open data to make urban mobility more sustainable.

The following Review of the Climathon and the mobility challenge is an edited excerpt from a post by Aylin Cornelius, published 8th November 2019 on the Open Source Lab blog featured here with my own photos.

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Solving Mobility Challenges @ Berlin Climathon

The Climathon took place over 24 hours starting on the 25th October 2019 at Futurium Berlin. The event was hosted by Einstein Center for Digital Future, Lichtblick, Edge Technology and the Open Source Lab. After the challenge hosts pitched their challenges, about 50 participants decided to take on the Open Source Lab challenge Berlin on the Move.

The Challenge

The Open Source Lab called for participants to create open prototypes and ideas for future sustainable urban mobility, particularly in terms of the major transport challenges of Berlin.

Solutions could address the following questions:

• How can mobility data contribute to urban CO2 reduction?

• How can tools support behavioural change for a more environmentally conscious mobility behaviour?

• What are the weak spots of Berlin neighbourhoods in terms of a lacking mobility infrastructure and how can these be resolved?

• How can valuable data sources be used for mobility tools without undermining the digital sovereignty of citizens?

• How can mobility data contribute to creating an open innovation ecosystem?

The proposed solutions had to include the utilisation of open data, particularly datasets the Open Source Lab provided in partnership with the data partners:

• FixMyBerlin provided the Happy Bike Index, a rating of the Berlin cycling infrastructure

• Deutsche Bahn’s Open Data team provided a number of Berlin datasets, such as from DB Mindbox

• TIER Mobility provided access to a dataset that includes anonymized geo-locations of all TIER rides in Berlin during September

• Tagesspiegel Innovation Lab provided raw data from Radmesser

• VBB provided open data, including S Bahn station and timetable data

• CityLab provided an overview of Berlin’s open mobility data online as well as relevant open datasets, such as air pollution measurements

The Results

Unlike usual hackathons, the Climathon teams were extremely multi-disciplinary, with developers and computer scientists working alongside social and environmental scientists as well as policy and design oriented individuals. The teams worked through the night developing their ideas into manageable prototype concepts that could be pitched to the jury the next day as viable solutions if they were to be developed into working prototypes post-Climathon. The solutions developed were New Track, Tonspur Berlin, Switchy, Eco2me, Report and Ride, CloseTheGap.

New Track

Data driven criteria based navigation system

The aim of New Track was to make walking in Berlin more attractive and safe by creating a user-centered app. With the help of data on air quality in Berlin as well as data on accidents, New Track can potentially reduce the numbers of car rides and make people opt for their own feet instead.

Tonspur Berlin

Activating Public Space

The team of Tonspur Berlin proposed an app that makes walking in Berlin more interactive by providing pedestrians with real-time background information on the route they are taking. “Did you know that this is the place where Kennedy said ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’? Have a short listen to his speech!” or “The biggest Fridays for Future strike started right here. Listen to the chants of the protesters!” could be potential outcomes of the app. Walking could then ultimately appear more appealing to commuters of all kinds as they feel more connected to the city and their area.

Switchy

Help Cities to Reduce Congestions and Emissions via Park & Ride

Sustainable Mobility will only ever be a doable option for the majority of society if rural areas are connected to cities with bike lanes and public transport. Switchy proposed an app that shows users the closest park-and-ride car parks to make commuting from the countryside into the city easier and more convenient. The app also shows the user’s CO2, time and money savings as a way to underline the value of public transport for individuals and the environment.

Eco2me

burn less, gain more

Treating users with small rewards for more sustainable mobility behavior is at the core of the app Eco2me. The idea behind the project is to encourage users to switch to walking, cycling and using public transport instead of their car. Eco2me allows users to collect e-coins which users can use for a discount on a coffee during their bike/walking/train commute to work.

Report & Ride

Obstacles such as e-scooters that are dumped on the pavement, bumps in the road, traffic jams during rush hours and roadworks can ruin the cycling experience around the city. In order to make cycling fun again, the Report & Ride team decided to create an app, which enables users to report any problems

CloseTheGap

Help decision makers make better decisions by providing urban intelligence.

The app combines different data sets in order to get a better understanding on the areas in Berlin that are difficult, and potentially dangerous, to cycle.

The Winner

The jury chose CloseTheGap as the winning team. CloseTheGap’s data driven approach, with multiple currently disconnected data sources could create a new type of decision making tool to improve mobility policy making and governance. If developed further it could have an immediate and measured impact in Berlin for sustainable mobility. More information about the project can be found on the team's Github page.