Slide Strategic Sessions

1.3 | Artificial Intelligence for smart and sustainable mobility

Mobility and transport are important for all. Whether travelling for work or leisure, or as an end-user or actor in international supply chains, our use of it is inevitable. Proactively shaping future green, safe and smart mobility is key to the ambitions described in the European Commission’s Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy 2020.

 

An enabling environment for game-changing technologies with large potential benefits for mobility and transport, such as Artificial Intelligence, is essential to facilitate that the EU can become a prime deployment destination for innovators. Furthermore, to make the transport sector’s digital transformation a reality, the EU needs to ensure that the key digital enablers are in place, including electronic components for mobility, network infrastructure, cloud-to-edge resources, data technologies, and Artificial Intelligence. These innovations can enhance the system’s approach to mobility, bringing efficiency benefits and improving the connections and alignment amongst modes. Furthermore, they can enable the paradigm shift towards a mobility system focused on people and good flows. The concrete application possibilities of Artificial Intelligence solutions are multiple and still highly unexplored. A coherent European approach and a European regulatory framework that also considers the specificities of the different transport modes could shorten the learning curve, increasing adoption and reducing cost. This approach can be instrumental for areas such as logistics where the application domain is going across the modes. It will also be an essential approach for urban mobility applications, for which joint learning approaches and shared experiences help speed up innovation development and uptake.

 

With these advancements, there are emerging risks e.g., privacy, intentional misuse or hacks, resilience, but also on the exclusion of digital unschooled citizens and lack of user acceptance. These issues need to be incorporated into the overall development process from an early stage on, to avoid that these will grow into roadblocks.

 

 

The session aims to explore the (potential) roadblocks and enablers. The session will focus on:

 

  • What is the current state of development and application of AI in mobility and transport? What are the benefits and opportunities to exploit?
  • How can we create a clear, enabling environment for developing, testing and implementing game-changing technologies?
  • How can AI help to achieve existing political goals (e.g., Green Deal, SSMS) in transport (e.g., decarbonisation, digitalisation)? What are the barriers and challenges that would need to be addressed at the EU level, or at the local level, e.g., for urban mobility management?
  • To what extent is there a need for multimodal coherence in data management, and current data management solutions used and under development – What could be the role of an EU common mobility data space, particularly in view of supporting AI in mobility and transport?
  • Mobility and transport as driving forces for AI innovation in other application domains, and learnings from other sectors.

SESSION ORGANISERS: 

 

  • Chair: ERTRAC (Margriet Van Schijndel, TU Eindhoven)
  • Co-chairs: PT (João Paulo Costeira, IST – University of Lisbon and Teresa Galvão, FEUP – University of Porto)

 

SPEAKERS: 

 

  • Anne-Fleur van Veenstra, TNO, Director of Science Strategic Analysis & Policy at TNO
  • Carlo Borghini, Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking
  • Aleksander Hammernes, Kongsberg Maritime, Product Advisor for Situational Awareness
  • Joost Vantomme, CEO ERTICO-ITS Europe
  • Barry Kirwan, Eurocontrol
  • Eliane Moreno, VW Data lab

 

MODERATOR:

 

  • Margriet van Schijndel-de Nooij, TU/e & CCAM Partnership

 

RAPPORTEUR:

 

  • João Paulo Costeira, IST, University of Lisbon
  • Teresa Galvão, FEUP, University of Porto