SINFONICA

SINFONICA (Social INnovation to FOster iNclusIve cooperative, Connected and Automated mobility) aims to facilitate the shift toward innovative, smart mobility concepts in an inclusive and equitable way, through the adoption of an approach that always puts users and their needs at the centre.

To fulfill this ambition, the SINFONICA project will develop functional, efficient, and innovative strategies, methods, and tools to engage users, suppliers and other stakeholders of Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM), to collect, understand and structure their needs, wishes and concerns related to CCAM in a manageable and exploitable way. The acceptance of Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) solutions by citizens and future users is an element of strong interest for all stakeholders involved in the autonomous and connected vehicle sector as well as other (non-vehicle) connected services.

SINFONICA is developing efficient and innovative strategies to engage citizens, assess the current situation on CCAM deployments, collect data from 4 different context and user groups (the Groups of Interest), elaborate these data using data and people analytics with the help of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) to develop knowledge maps and share all the knowledge defined, created, and organized within the Project, through innovative tools and useful guidelines and recommendations towards capacity building for decision makers. All the above has the overall objective of fostering inclusive CCAM deployments, based on user needs.

The Project follows an overall bottom-up approach to capture the mobility needs of European citizens, with special attention to the needs of vulnerable users and under-researched groups. Different segments of society will be represented and directly engaged in a participative process. This will contribute to the development of a wide inventory of knowledge organized in the form of knowledge maps.

Finally, SINFONICA will create an innovative tool – the Knowledge Map Explorer – able to exploit the knowledge by providing practical guidelines and long-term recommendations to ensure that CCAM solutions meet social inclusion criteria.

*This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Reasearch and Innovation Programme.

Results

Data and information collected – together with the methodologies and strategies defined in SINFONICA – will be rephrased through the creation of technical knowledge maps. Starting from these knowledge maps, the Consortium will develop the Knowledge Map Explorer: an interactive tool to deliver tailored information, based on the profile of the user consulting it (industries actors, road operators, public administrations, researchers, academia, and stakeholders interested to the CCAM domain and its societal aspects). The Knowledge Map Explorer will be an intelligent user-friendly navigation system: depending on the type of user doing the research, the system will offer what is most appropriate for its specific need. The tool will propose guidelines and recommendation for the implementation of CCAM solutions, specifically indicated to be truly inclusive, equitable, efficient, and accessible according to each specific context.

ISINNOVA’s role

Leader of the participatory strategy and methods to capture mobility needs and future expectations from CCAM
ISINNOVA will support the groups of interest in the implementation of the qualitative methods for data collection, mostly based on community-based research, to ensure that the final methods and tools are achieved in a co-creation effort of all the parties involved in CCAM design and deployment. It will provide for practical guidelines to steer the local participatory processes involving a wide and diverse range of future CCAM users and stakeholders. It foreseen to use a mix of methods including focus groups with citizens, semi-structured interviews with vulnerable to exclusion groups and a series of co-creation workshops involving a wider set of participants (users, experts, CCAM developers, policy makers).
ISINNOVA is also responsible for:
- the development of best practices in social equity with respect to smart mobility, focusing on CCAM solutions and issues. In the final stage of the project these guidelines will be used to develop a set of measurable indicators for social equity and inclusion which can be used to benchmark ongoing and future projects and deployments concerning CCAM.
- the drafting of long-term policy recommendations by creating a vision for socially inclusive and equitable CCAM in Europe that can be used as a basis for policy development by public authorities. Policy recommendations are thus aimed at public authorities (national and regional/local/city levels), including the European Commission and other funders of research. These can also be used by other mobility operators/service providers.