Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MUV (Mobility Urban Values)
Teaser
MUV - Mobility Urban Values fosters sustainable and active urban mobility in an entirely novel approach offering a behavior change measure to trigger community participation and evidence-based decision making. A digital-physical co-designed game to re-frame, at the...
Summary
MUV - Mobility Urban Values fosters sustainable and active urban mobility in an entirely novel approach offering a behavior change measure to trigger community participation and evidence-based decision making.
A digital-physical co-designed game to re-frame, at the neighborhood scale, mobility values among citizens (players), companies (sponsors) and mobility stakeholders (trainers).
Rather than changing urban infrastructures, the project uses an approach based on a mix of non-technological and technological solutions co-created and co-designed through a direct dialogue with local communities and stakeholders, aimed at promoting a shift towards more sustainable and healthy mobility choices and toward people-and-not-car oriented policies.
MUV user-centered mobility services are piloted in a set of diverse urban neighborhoods spread across Europe: Buitenveldert in Amsterdam (NL), Sant Andreu in Barcelona (ES), Muide/Meulested in Ghent (BE), the historic district of Fundao (PT), Jätkäsaari in Helsinki (FI), the Centro Storico of Palermo (IT) - and extended to additional communities through Open Calls for new cities willing to join the network and adopt the MUV approach.
MUV’s technological ecosystem integrates three components:
1. a mobile and wearable app (muvapp.eu) used as the interface towards end-users to (i) explaining MUV’s philosophy through its gaming features, (ii) anonymously tracking users’ mobility choices, (iii) giving visual feedback and statistic about sustainable mobility improvements, and (iv) letting users challenging friends of the same city or cities among each other and redeem trophies and, in second phase, even physical rewards and discounts made available by sponsors.
2. a distributed network of environmental monitoring stations (co-designed with FabLabs and local makers) aimed at collecting useful data but also interacting actively with citizens;
3. a web dashboard providing recommendations to local supporting organizations, mobility managers and decision makers.
The mobility and environmental anonymized data collected through MUV feeds citizens’ awareness, civic hackers, local economy and, above of all, planning and policy-making processes to develop more effective urban mobility solutions.
The project is aimed to reach thus overall the following specific objectives:
1. understanding the neighborhoods’ peculiarities and emerging values to define an effective behavior change strategy;
2. co-designing site-specific solutions for better and more liveable urban environments;
3. developing scalable digital solutions and technologies to improve globally the experience of urban mobility;
4. raising awareness among citizens on the importance of sustainable and healthy mobility choices, reducing private vehicular traffic and its negative externalities, encouraging local consumption;
5. analyzing, visualizing and sharing mobility and environmental data to build an effective decision support system for multiple stakeholders;
6. integrating new co-created mobility solutions into urban policy-making and planning processes at neighborhood level;
7. bringing the whole experiment to the market through an innovative business model in order to improve urban transportation in neighborhoods and cities all over the world.
Real impact is measured with an evidence-based approach to maximize economic viability and Social Return On Investment (SROI).
Work performed
- A clear vision and methodology framework have been defined to engage local communities in order to co-design & customize with them the MUV game.
- This framework helped Pilot Managers in mapping the current mobility challenges, social and political trends and developing site specific action plans to involve all the relevant stakeholders.
- Ad-hoc toolkits have been co-designed in the context of knowledge sharing sessions among consortium partners to allow pilot managers to organize autonomously co-creation activities in the six neighbourhoods.
- MUV game, service, data management plan and technological platform have been developed following both MUV vision and co-creation results.
- MUV mobile app has been released in May 2018 for internal testing and officially launched during the European Mobility Week (September 2018).
- Communication activities and events to promote the app, gather feedback and strengthen the MUV local communities have been organized in all the Pilot Cities.
- From September 20th to November 30th 2018, 906 users have downloaded the app (65% Android, 35% iOS) with, on the average, 11 new users every day and 50 MUVers playing on a daily basis.
- 9 out of 15 applicants to the MUV Open Call have been selected as Associated Cities. A “MUV starter kit†has been developed for them to reproduce one year of MUV activities.
- Meetings with public authorities, private companies’ mobility managers and relevant stakeholders have been scheduled regularly to identify specific needs, potential benefits and, starting from these, co-design with them the web dashboard that will be offered as support tool for decision making toward more effective sustainable planning processes.
Final results
After the first year’s workshops and events, and particularly after the launch of the MUV app in the Pilot Cities in September 2018, the Consortium started collecting data, analyzing it and soon it will be able to measure the core impact of MUV in the selected neighbourhoods. However, some important tests to measure MUV impact on society in Europe have been already done by applying to startup calls and by launching the first MUV Open Call.
MUV was among the 15 finalists of the “Connected City†challenge promoted by Talent Garden (Italy), it was awarded by ForumPA as the Best App at the “APP4Sud†Italian contest and by Motor24 (Portugal) as the Best App in the category “Citizenshipâ€.
As for the MUV Open Call, in order to engage Associate communities (receiving no funding from the EU), MUV needed to prove its value proposition in other contexts at its early stage.
The first MUV Open Call was officially launched during the CIVITAS Forum 2018 and by the time of closing the Call on October 31st 2018, 30 organisations from 20 countries, 5 of which outside the EU (covering 4 continents), registered. Among these, 15 (50%) submitted a full application, well beyond our target of 6 Associate Cities. The evaluation process, carried out by different teams of three MUV consortium members each, identified 9 applications above the threshold (16/25).
Given the added value that a collaboration with these 9 communities could bring to the project, it was decided to adjust the work plan to bring them all in as Associate MUVerhoods.
The successful applicants now in the process of signing a Memorandum of Understanding with MUV Consortium are listed below:
â— Dudelange (LU): Ville de Dudelange
◠Katowice, Gliwice, Sosnowiec (PL): ​Górnośląsko-Zagłębiowska Metropolia
â— Liverpool (UK): Colu Technologies
◠Oostende (BE): ​Stad Oostende
â— Rome (IT): Link Campus University
â— Å abac (SR): Pametni grad / Smart city
â— Teresina (BR): Municipality of Teresina
â— Timisoara (RO): Urban Survey
â— Veszprem (HU): Funneaty
The Consortium is furthermore exploring the opportunity to bring on board other Associates (Milan and Cagliari, also applicants of the Open Call; Chieri and Munich from the Interreg Alpine project SaMBA).
The Open Call was thus a first important success.
Website & more info
More info: http://muv2020.eu/.