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Friday, 27 January 2017 10:04

SIMON: Inclusive mobility. ICT solutions for the mobility of people with disabilities Featured

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Alberto Ferreras Remesal, Amparo López Vicente, José Laparra Hernández, José S. Solaz Sanahuja, Elisa Signes i Pérez, Eva Muñoz Navarro *, Manuel Serrano Matoses*

Instituto de Biomecánica (IBV). Universitat Politècnica de València. Edificio 9C. Camino de Vera s/n (46022)  Valencia (Spain)
* ETRA I+D

The practical application of the concept of mobility as a service (MaaS), especially with regard to the transport needs of people with disabilities and elderly people in urban areas, reveals obvious limitations of the model and poses important challenges such as equal access to transport, ease of travel and barrier-free destinations, including the ability to park. As regards this point, it is essential to ensure that the spaces reserved for people with disabilities are used by those who are entitled to them. The SIMON Project tackles these challenges by offering a complete integration of technological solutions that facilitate accessible navigation, information on mobility and the access-rights management. Such solutions were tested on a large scale in the cities of Madrid, Lisbon, Parma and Reading. This opens a new model based on Inclusive Mobility as a right for all citizens.

INTRODUCTION

Accessibility and mobility are two of the main challenges in the design and planning of urban areas. Although considerable progress has been made in recent decades, there are still many obstacles that prevent or hinder people with disabilities from moving around and using services on an equal footing. It is estimated that these problems affect approximately 80 million people in the European Union, which means there is still a gap to be overcome for the correct social integration of all citizens. Some examples of these problems include:

♦ The existing solutions are either partial or specifically developed for a particular municipality or region, which makes them difficult to scale and lack a specific approach. Therefore, there is no integrated solution that offers these services in a unified way and that can be used by any city in a simple way, nor is there any working methodology that can be used in a repeatable way and which guarantees success.

♦ Lack of resources and information on the travel options, both in public transport (routes, accessible means, accessible travel planning, information in real time, ...) and private transport (routes, location and availability of parking spaces, access to restricted areas, ...).

♦ Fraud situations in the use of the European Parking Card (forgery, use by unauthorized persons, etc.). Fraud and misuse of the parking card are very important issues on the agenda of most major European cities, which involves both a high economic cost and limiting access to those users who really need it.

♦ The existing technological solutions are not incorporated in services that facilitate transport and mobility nor are they adapted to the characteristics and needs of the users.

The SIMON project addresses such problems. SIMON is a European project for demonstration purposes, started in January 2014, with four large-scale pilots in Madrid, Lisbon, Parma and Reading. The objective of SIMON is to promote the independent life and social participation of people with reduced mobility in the context of multimodal urban transport and access to public parking. To this end, the project integrates different ICT solutions that have made it possible to access information, navigation and to manage right of access.

The project, which lasted 39 months, consisted of a consortium coordinated by the Spanish company ETRA I+D and other partners from Italy, Portugal, Germany and Spain (including the City Hall of Madrid, the Regional Transport Consortium of Madrid, the Technical University of Madrid, and the Instituto de Biomecánica of Valencia). The project is funded by the European Commission within the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Program (CIP).

DEVELOPMENT

The project was developed in different stages, where the technological implementations, led by ETRA I+D, and the management of the requirements, usability and accessibility of the system, in charge of the IBV, were differentiated.  It began with a preparation phase to define the requirements of the system, the needs of the users and the architecture of the various components using the methodology developed by the Instituto de Biomecánica. After the integration and initial testing of the different components, a large-scale demonstration phase was carried out to implement SIMON under real conditions in the pilot cities. The final phase of the project develops a roadmap to deploy the system proposed at a European level, which takes into account all the conclusions about transferability, scalability and standardization recommendations in order to ensure that SIMON can be effectively replicated in any European city.

The difference between a model based on MaaS and a solution focused on Inclusive Mobility is the ability to integrate from the beginning the end user in the process of definition and creation of the technological solution and the guarantee of accessibility of each and every component of the final system. Thus, during all the SIMON phases, design and integration activities are combined with the direct involvement of the groups concerned and stakeholders, especially people with disabilities. In this respect, the Instituto de Biomecánica played a prominent role in the development and deployment of a methodology to assess and implement inclusive mobility solutions in cities (Figure 1). This approach included the following activities:

♦ Review of the existing situation and the needs of the various pilot cities.

♦ Definition of the characteristics of the end users of the system (people with reduced mobility), in terms of their functional capacity and accessibility and usability requirements.

♦ Definition of the system requirements as regards functionality, usability and accessibility.

♦ Development of the different use cases and scenarios.

♦ Adaptation of the existing technologies and applications that make up the different components of the system by using conceptual design techniques.

♦ Launch of the initial prototype in order to test it under controlled conditions of use. The tests of use with users with disabilities made it possible to define the priority functions of the system and to correct and enhance accessibility and usability conditions.

♦ Follow-up of the large-scale pilot through communication and motivation activities aimed at end users and through data collection techniques both automatic (collection of use data of the applications) and personal (questionnaires).

 

Figure 1. IBV Methodology to assess MaaS solutions

RESULTS OBTAINE: THE SIMON SYSTEM 

SIMON is mainly addressed to citizens with reduced mobility (elderly and disabled), who require specific information and an effective management of their access rights to transport and parking. The SIMON system was designed to enable these users to plan their travels both with public and private transport in a unified manner, including access and validation services. An ICT-enhanced European Parking Card has been the main validation element, combined with the use of smartphones, to provide navigation and information services as well as to manage validation. These systems, together with other elements such as parking meters, were used in a flexible way, so that they are accessible to users with different requirements and technological availability.

In addition to citizens with reduced mobility, SIMON also targets public authorities, public transport operators and parking services managers. SIMON will allow the cities that implement it to manage the use of public parking space by receiving real-time information on the use of reserved parking spaces, which will reduce fraud and allow cities to introduce policies to promote the sustainable use of all transport modes.

SIMON was developed on the basis of mobile applications and a new model of European Parking Card that incorporates ICT solutions. The system consists of four flexible services:

♦ SIMON SAYS: Management of access rights to parking spaces.

♦ SIMON ANSWERS: Multimodal navigation (with both public and private transport) and information on accessibility.

♦ SIMON BOOKS: Reservation of parking spaces and information about parking areas (empty or occupied).

♦ SIMON OPENS: Access management for people with reduced mobility in restricted urban areas.

These services are implemented in three applications:

♦  A mobile application for citizens: SIMON MOBILE. This application, available free of charge for Android and iPhone, allows users to plan routes on public and private transport, receive information about accessibility and available parking spaces, access restricted areas and validate in parking areas by using the new parking card (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Mobile application SIMON Mobile

♦ A mobile application for parking controllers: SIMON CONTROLS. This application makes it easier for controllers to verify the validity of the parking cards of the cars parked, optimizing the routes and acting as an obstacle in fraud situations (Figure 3).

Figure 3. SIMON CONTROLS application (controllers)

♦ An application for management and to support public authorities and mobility operators: the SIMON Authority Operator tool (Figure 4), which makes it possible to manage users in the system as well as to display statistics and usage parameters.

Figure 4. SIMON Authority Operator tool

The devices used by these applications are based on different technologies that provide a high level of efficiency and security:

♦ RFID smart cards.

♦ Smartphones with NFC, which can emulate the operation of a smart card.

♦ Intelligent parking meters, which can act as an interface of the previous ones and complement them.

SIMON services are implemented in the existing infrastructure of the cities, including electronic payment gateways, public transport control centers, intelligent transport systems and smart cards.

The new parking cards make it possible to interact with all the elements of the system, which offers greater benefits and guarantees that the spaces are occupied by those users entitled to use them. Work continues in order to make this model card become the standard adopted by the European Union (Figure 5).

Figure 5. New parking card implemented by the City Hall of Madrid based on the standards developed in the SIMON project

CONCLUSIONS

The SIMON Project has demonstrated that it is possible to improve mobility and parking for the citizens with disabilities by using better identification systems and integrating different ICT solutions for information, navigation and accessibility.

During the development of the project, the system components were defined and adapted, including mobile applications and the proposal for a new Parking Card with ICT components. The system elements were all reviewed and assessed by end users, which helped adapt them to their needs as well as to enhance their usability and accessibility.

The whole system was tested under real conditions in the cities of Madrid, Lisbon, Parma and Reading, where the services and facilities that were most appropriate to each environment were used. This flexibility of the system makes it possible to easily adapt it to any European city in the future.

The aim is to ensure that such solutions are established as standards in the European Union, so that all citizens can enjoy their advantages regardless of where they live and where they move to. The SIMON project is the starting point for developing a new model of inclusive mobility that allows all citizens to access mobility on an equal footing, and which places the citizen, and not the city, at the center of technological development.

ACKOWLEDGEMENTS

This project was funded by the European Commission's Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Program (CIP).

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