Center for Sustainable Future Mobility
The mobility sector is of paramount importance for a modern society. Economic and societal well-being relies heavily on safe, reliable, affordable, high-capacity, and clean transport infrastructure for the efficient movement of people and goods at local/regional, national, and global scale.
However, in Switzerland mobility accounts for about 40% of the domestic GHG emissions and 48% of CO2 emissions. This means that a radical overhaul in terms of energy sources, infrastructure and assets, management, and planning systems will be indispensable for maximizing sustainability and efficiency. The required transformation must be accomplished within about 30 years and will affect all Swiss households, industries, and local authorities. It will also have profound impacts on the Swiss energy system and on the import and export flow of goods and services.
In this context, the decarbonization of the transport system is a key goal to which the research activities should contribute significantly. Following the targets of the Paris Agreement and the Swiss Federal Council, a fast transition towards virtually zero GHG emissions is necessary.
Mission
The mission of the center is to deliver research-based contributions to the design and implementation of sustainable transport systems. For that the center builds on the strategic partnership established in 2018 with SBB followed by Siemens and AMAG. It represents a joint agreement between about 40 ETH Zurich chairs who committed to join forces internally and with other relevant institutions, such as stakeholders from business, society and public administration. We aim at creating an internationally highly visible hub for research, education, and knowledge transfer towards the implementation of a sustainable mobility system.
The CSFM thematic scope extends, beyond multidisciplinary, to a cross-sectoral functionality, exploiting innovation potentials across all modes and services (road, rail, air, waterborne, low-speed, non- motorized, etc.). Transferring insights, models, and methods from one sector/mode/service to the other and using synergy potentials whenever meaningful can be a powerful tool for global system improvement.