To ensure Connected, Cooperative, and Automated Mobility (CCAM) solutions are accessible and beneficial to all, CulturalRoad places diversity at the core of its work. We aim to integrate cultural, geographical, and exogenous diversity into our methodology, ensuring that future CCAM mobility systems are inclusive and equitable.
To refine this approach, CulturalRoad conducted an analysis of existing CCAM projects, focusing on how they address diversity. This important first research, led by our partner INIT, in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Technical University of Denmark (DTU), National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), and Arriva, offers valuable insights to guide CulturalRoad’s work and future steps.
This research effort allowed to identify guidelines and methods that could be implemented and extended by CulturalRoad, serving as a starting point to develop a holistic approach to inclusivity for the project’s demonstrations and final evaluation. It also allowed to identify additional research gaps that CulturalRoad can fill, especially for what regards the effects of cultural diversity on CCAM acceptance and accessibility.
More than a dozen European automated mobility projects were analysed and compared to identify key results that could support CulturalRoad in building up an inclusive framework for automated mobility. Among these, projects such as SHOW, ENA, Digibus Austria, SINFONICA and 5G-MOBIX highlighted a variety of approaches to geographical and legislative diversity, as well as challenges that must be solved for a future large-scale deployment of equitable connected mobility solutions. Analysing the deliverables and findings of the projects highlighted some recurring patterns. Among them, the lack of cross-border and international standards proved to be problematic: different communication infrastructures and discrepancies in the legislation made it difficult to coordinate the pilots in several projects. As an example of such challenges, 5G-MOBIX had to deal with communication standards that are subject to state regulations and not homogenized at a European level – effectively forcing the project to adapt to different legal frameworks in the scope of the same cross-border pilot. Countries such as France, Germany and Greece have established solid state-wide legislation on connected mobility, but others are still lagging behind.
In addition, while geographical diversity was an important topic for several projects, mostly in the scope of rural vs urban environment and connecting mobility-poor regions with the metropolitan areas, such as what done by the projects ENA and Digibus Austria, cultural diversity was almost unexplored. CulturalRoad can therefore help close this research gap by investigating cultural, geographical, and exogenous aspects of diversity to develop equitable and inclusive CCAM deployment strategies, focusing on acceptance, psychological factors, intention of use, inclusivity, and safety within a single framework.
More details can be found in the CulturalRoad Deliverable 1.1 ‘Report on CCAM Readiness’, which will soon be accessible on our website – stay tuned!
