URBANITE General
URBANITE General
Urban mobility challenges from use cases and how they can be addressed by Disruptive Technologies - Part 2/5 - Bilbao
Now, we head for our second stop; going through the "North Sea - Mediterranean" and the "Atlantic" corridors of the Trans-European Transport Network we move in the north of Spain, in the city of Bilbao.
With an area of 41,60 km2 and around 355,000 inhabitants, Bilbao is the heart of a metropolitan area that extends along the estuary of the Nervión River with a population close to 1 million. In the last 25 years, Bilbao has suffered an important urban transformation from an industrial economy to a city based on a service economy. This has helped to balance the city and provide a friendly environment for pedestrians with wider pavements; reduction of on-street car parking in the city centre; traffic light control system to cater for pedestrians; promenades for walking and cycling. Today, 65% of internal movements are produced on foot.
In this context, the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) for the Horizon 2030 Bilbao covers a significant role; its main objectives are:
- Reducing air and noise pollution
- Improving safety by reducing accidents and fatalities
- Guaranteeing universal accessibility
- Improving energy and transport (passengers and goods) efficiency
- Contributing to improve the attractiveness and environmental quality of the city
Of particular interest is the “Pedestrian mobility strategy” aiming to promote non-motorized modes of transport (especially pedestrian displacement) since these are the ones that best suit sustainable mobility objectives. Part of this strategy is the transformation of Moyúa plaza, for the exclusive use of public transport, pedestrians and cyclists, prohibiting private traffic.
What is Bilbao aiming for?
To obtain these results the city of Bilbao aims to obtain a global vision of the city in terms of sustainable mobility, be able to make decisions based on updated data (being able to predict the impact resulting from applied measures), follow a more agile decisions-making process (facilitating communication between stakeholders involved in the definition and development of the SUMP), translate measures impact into health and life quality indicators and access data coming from scattered sources that are automatically collected and integrated.
The role of Disruptive Technologies.
In the context of Bilbao, it is essential that decision-makers are able to easily access the most updated data; in this sense tools that facilitate the connection of data sources and the data harmonisation (leveraging common and well-defined data models) will support the decision-makers in their daily activities.
Once data is collected, a data catalogue (as a unique point of access to the data) will offer the capabilities to search data taking into account different criteria; among them, the transport mode will allow the decision-makers to filter available data, reducing the time they spend to identify the data they need.
Facilitated setup and execution of simulations (for instance, to forecast impact on traffic, mobility patterns or SUMP’s KPIs resulting from a measure/policy applied) will support the decision-making process reducing the time spent in performing those simulations. Tools to create charts and graphs that summarise the status of mobility in the city from the sustainability point of view will allow the decision-maker to have, in a single view, the overall and relevant information to globally monitor the mobility in the city; on the other side, the possibility to define and create customised KPIs and indicators will allow the decision-makers to fine-tune the dashboards with all the relevant information they need to take into account in the planning of the mobility in the city.
To this aim, checking if the data is updated will allow the creation of analysis and simulation on the basis of correct information that represents the real status of the city, whereas pre-processing of collected data will reduce the time needed to set up the analysis and simulation for decision-making processes.
Finally, tools that facilitate the exchange of information between the stakeholders involved in the definition and development of the SUMP will make the communication among them more fluent, thus improving the entire decision-making process beyond the management of the SUMP itself.
