Urban mobility is going through unprecedented changes during these weeks. Cities are facing challenges which require unique solutions in no time due to the COVID-19 crisis. In addition to these, local mobility strategies for longer terms must be reviewed and adapted to the new normal.
Will connected and automated technologies play a more substantial role in urban mobility? How can we predict their impacts on urban mobility?
LEVITATE partners and city representatives are eager to share their views with you!
Title: 2nd LEVITATE Webinar: The impacts of automation in urban transport – featuring local urban strategies Date & time: 10:00-11:30 CET, 11 June, 2020
Will freight transport and logistics become safer, more effective or integrated as a result of automated technologies on the market? Find out by watching the first LEVITATE webinar!
The first LEVITATE webinar on 23 April was framed around the opportunities and challenges that freight transport is facing as a result of innovations in automated technologies. Looking at the current situation we are living in, discussions were also focused around the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on the sector. Furthermore, expected changes in the implementation and operation of freight and logistics systems in the post-COVID times were on the table.
The webinar was kicked off by Pete Thomas, project coordinator of LEVITATE, who gave a brief introduction about the project. It was followed by a LEVITATE-focused presentation from Bin Hu, Scientist at the Austrian Institute of Technology, who is leading the freight-related use case in the project. He presented about the impact of automation on urban parcel delivery through the results of micro-simulations and operations research carried out in the framework of the project.
Thanks to Fernando Liesa, Secretary General of ALICE (Alliance for Logistics Innovation through Collaboration in Europe), attendees learnt about the work of ALICE and how they help European logistical companies to keep up with developments and new strategies through collaboration and knowledge-sharing. The main research question which has been answered was how automation can help freight transport and logistics to reach zero-emission targets by 2050 and become more integrated on a European level. Fernando also pointed out some new challenges in the face of COVID-19 in relation to protecting vehicle drivers and riders during the pandemic by using automated technologies.
Last but not at least, Kris Neyens, Manager at VIL (Flemish Innovation Cluster for Logistics) presented one of their own projects after introducing their multidisciplinary collaboration in the Flemish freight sector. In project ALEES (self-driving logistical electric units for urban environments), VIL is testing autonomous urban logistical entities to distribute parcels throughout dense urban areas, for example through a demonstration in Mechelen to develop the software behind the technology and create the legislative environment for future operation. If you are curious about the previously mentioned project, you can read more here or we welcome you to watch the presentation during the recorded webinar below.
This webinar, which took place on 23 April 2020, gave an insight on autonomous solutions in freight, as well as their future impacts and potentials in the transport sector.
Presentations – Introduction of LEVITATE and its use case on freight transport
– VIL (Platform for the logistics sector in Flanders) presents their project ALEES
– Overview of ALICE on Autonomous Freight Transport Potentials
View webinar recording
Are you also curious about recent autonomous innovation in freight transport and research on their future impacts and potentials? Then have a look at the recording of the webinar.
About LEVITATE
LEVITATE is a 3-year project which main output will be a policy support tool (PST) to help local authorities forecast the impacts of automated vehicles over the short, medium and long-term. The PST will also contain a back-casting tool providing guidance to local authorities on which measures to implement to achieve desired outcomes against a backdrop of increasing vehicle automation.
Connected and automated transport systems (CATS) are expected to be introduced in increasing numbers over the next decades. Moreover, they are expected to have considerable impacts on mobility, safety, the environment and society as a whole. One of the aims of LEVITATE is to forecast these impacts. This article collects the impact of CATS on road safety which has been briefly presented during the last webinar of LEVITATE, as well. Moreover, the article written by Wendy Weijermars (SWOV), Andreas Hula (AIT), Amna Chaudhry (LOUGH), Sasa Sha (LOUGH), Rins de Zwart (SWOV), Celina Mons (SWOV) and Hitesh Boghani (LOUGH) further presents the specific impacts on road safety for the individual sub-use cases and communicates how these expected impacts can be quantified. Conclusions suggest that in normal circumstances, CAVs are expected to have a lower crash rate than human driven vehicles; CAVs make less errors than human drivers, are assumed to respect all traffic rules and are expected to have lower reaction times and less variability in driving behaviour.
Curious about further conclusions drawn in the article? Read the entire article: LEVITATE: Road safety impacts of Connected and Automated Vehicles.
Note: This article has been updated in July 2021 including further research results derived from the sub-use case.
ARCADE is a project whose mission is to network with all the vehicle automation projects. LEVITATE has already established a dialogue with ARCADE partners about impact assessment methodologies.
On February 25th, ARCADE organises an online workshop on the topic of data sharing in the CCAM area. ARCADE is a H2020 Coordination and Support Action. Data sharing is one of its topics. In the CAD knowledge base, ARCADE collected material for data sharing.
For cost-effective evaluation of CCAM and for comparability of automated driving research studies, data sharing is essential. If not, costly parallel work on data collection remains common practice. For training of AI, large data sets are needed as well. Many hurdles for data sharing exist, starting from data sensitivity, security, data formats and descriptions, to privacy (GDPR). Today’s working-from-home practice has quickly enabled some remote access facilities.
In this workshop, we will identify bottlenecks and promising approaches for data sharing. The morning session is a broader webinar presenting today’s status, experiences and challenges. The afternoon expert workshop features three break-out sessions where we work on defining boundary conditions and next steps following promising approaches. It is possible to register for morning or afternoon only.
The break-out sessions are:
Principles for industry data sharing
What principles can we agree upon for enabling data sharing in industrial and research projects? Under what conditions is sharing possible? After an introduction of an international multi-partner project, we will work on promising approaches.
In-vehicle data selection and analysis
Data is generated in vehicles for research and development. This could lead to difficulties in managing large amounts of data, governing and protecting IP rights, and privacy issues. What if the data could be processed in-vehicle and only a reduced dataset is sent back-office, after data is pseudonized and reduced in size? This workshop will discuss how can we reach this state and what are the steps needed.
GDPR in practice
What practical privacy challenges do researchers and developers face in order to collaborate and share personal data? We will discuss examples of the type of problems which may be encountered, examining how (and if) they may be overcome.
The LEVITATE and CoEXist projects are developing knowledge and tools to help cities prepare for and steer the introduction of automated vehicles. The webinar, moderated by Suzanne Hoadley, provided insights into the methods developed for assessing the impacts of automated vehicles across a range of mobility domains and the findings from their application in real-life scenarios and using policy options such as parking regulation, road pricing and dedicated AV lanes.
Featured speakers were:
Dr. Hitesh Boghani, Senior Research Associate at Transport Safety Research Centre, Loughborough University (representing LEVITATE)
Dr. Johan Olstam, Senior Research Leader, Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (representing CoEXist)
Prof. Andrew Morris, Professor of Human Factors in Transport Safety at Loughborough University (representing LEVITATE)
The webinar, which took place on 15 October, was a Polis initiative in cooperation with LEVITATE and CoEXist.
