Scope

Urban mobility is currently experiencing a number of disruptive forces that are profoundly changing the manner in which citizens interact with cities. Younger citizens want on-demand access to mobility solutions without the inconvenience of ownership of cars, while older citizens want the personal freedom guaranteed by long-term access to personal mobility solutions. Regulators, driven by challenges such as global warming, air quality, noise pollution, as well as the economic and societal cost of congestion, are placing ever more stringent requirements on mobility solutions and the manner in which they integrate into the urban settings. Advances in areas such as communication networks, IoT, distributed ledger technology (Blockchain), smart cities, and in cyber-physics, are also placing increased expectations on the performance of urban mobility solutions. All this is happening at a time when the workhorse of urban mobility, the motor vehicle, is itself undergoing a transformative technological revolution. Cars have basically been in the same form, with the same functionality, since the invention of the diesel engine over 100 years ago.  Now suddenly, innovation is coming in every direction. The future of the automobile is no longer the internal combustion engine, but rather as mobility platforms that are autonomous, electric, connected, shared, and can be delivered as part of integrated mobility solutions, as well as for delivering services to both passengers/drivers and citizens alike. In future, these mobility solutions will be based on proactive devices that strive to serve the needs of those in need of mobility, but also strive to mitigate their effect on the general public (congestion, pollution, energy consumption). These forces, and new actuation possibilities, are causing a fundamental rethink of the way mobility solutions are designed in urban settings, necessitating not only technological innovation, but also the development of new ownership and business models, new ethical models, as well as new social and economic policies.

The objective of our specialty section is to be at the forefront of this revolution and report on the latest developments in this exciting area. Original Smart Mobility research articles in the following and related areas are welcome:

1-New Scientific Questions arising from Urban Mobility issues:

• optimization
• feedback control
• signalling, pricing and information parsing strategies for ensembles
• predictive modelling and optimization in closed loop
• driver, traffic and emissions modelling
• game theoretic questions
• gamification applications
• machine learning for smart mobility
• ergodic control of ensembles
• dimensioning and access management
• behavioural change theories and social science
• disturbance propagation and economic string theory

2- New integrated mobility concepts:

• new holistic concepts based on integrated modes of transport;;e-micro-mobility (e-
• bikes, e-scooters, etc.)
• last mile, first miles and city logistics
• electrification of vehicle fleet
• autonomous driving
• innovative secondary services
• pollution and energy management aspects

3-New mobility technologies

• design innovations in mobility platforms
• new propulsion methods
• applications of enabling technologies (blockchain, cyber-physics, IoT)
• enabling infrastructure (new ev charging strategies, parking management etc.)

4-New business models

• economic questions related to new mobility platforms
• business models related to shared mobility
• business models related to multimodal sharing mobility
• business models related to last mile, first miles and city logistics
• equilibrium theory

5-New use-cases for mobility platforms

• mobility platforms as sensor platforms
• software architecture issues

6-The ethical and social impact of new mobility platforms

• ethical issues associated with data privacy, veracity and sovereignty
• ethics of autonomous driving
• ethical sourcing of rare materials
• new mobility platforms and the environment
• social consequences of new mobility platforms
• new mobility platforms as an enabler of vulnerable citizens (accessibility, age, etc.)
• fairness, equality and access
• policy interventions for new mobility concepts.

Proof-of-concepts, use-cases, pilots, and real deployments

Copyright Statement