Research & Innovation

Mobility draws its strength from its enabling infrastructure, which pertains to the vehicles, the roads/pavement, aviation, and railway related assets (incl. important role of railway stations), which define the capacity and performance of the network for transportation of people and goods. In this respect, defining technologies that can reshape mobility entail improved powertrain and vehicle technologies, new materials for maximizing capacity while minimizing carbon footprint, and in particular renewable energy sources for decarbonization as well as new or repurposed transport, distribution and charging infrastructure.

Digital technologies will further change the mobility sector with accelerating speed. The ability to mine, process and use vast amounts of data related to transport is already starting to reshape the transport sector, enabling new operational models such as “Mobility as a Service”, or autonomous, interconnected vehicles. Their long shadows are affecting both consumer behaviour and investor decision-making now years in advance of their possible implementations. Design, monitoring, and operation of mobility systems could therefore be optimized, relying on data-driven and automated modules. To allow for these improvements, policy-makers, service providers and technology/infrastructure ought to adapt their modus-operandi towards an integrated and systems-oriented approach.

Flows of people and goods are the result of, but also the enabler of, social and economic change. They can be influenced by policies, in particular by restraints, quotas, pricing and the capacity of infrastructures and of services. Predictive capabilities for the extent of such responses and impacts are therefore very important for the sustainable operation of the systems in the short run and for the investment and maintenance decisions in the long run.

A better knowledge of the factors that influence the demand for transport services of the users of the transport system (individuals, firms, institutions), an understanding of the preferences and attitudes towards new technologies and of the effectiveness of transport policy measures, provide important insights to better design and implement a sustainable transport system. Building on the progress of the other themes the Center will analyse current transport behavior patterns, test new technologies, new transport approaches in suitable transdisciplinary test cases with our stakeholders. Further, the center will analyse which policy measures and involvement processes are more effective to implement these new technologies and transport approaches. The careful analysis of the politics, economics and social network interactions is part of this work.