We are looking for innovative ideas to be pitched at the EIT Urban Mobility Matchmaking Event Series in March 2021. This is an opportunity to present your organisation and get engaged in a Partner project responding to the upcoming Call for Proposals across five thematic challenge areas:
How to become a speaker? Submit your application until 28 February!
The transport sector is responsible for about 25% of the European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions. The European Green Deal, the EU’s plan to be climate neutral by 2050, aims for a 90% reduction in transport emissions during this period by prioritising cleaner and healthier means of transport.
Contributing only 0.4% of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe, and as the safest mode of land transport, rail is both a safe and sustainable means of transport. Despite this, only about 7% of passengers and 11% of goods in Europe currently travel by rail. Increased use of rail will significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions and pollution coming from EU transport. To promote rail transport – both passenger and freight – the EU has designated 2021 as the European Year of Rail.
2021 is the first year of implementation of the EU’s Fourth Railway Package, which aims to remove institutional, legal, and technical obstacles to achieve its vision of creating an integrated European railway area. One such obstacle to passenger rail transport is the fragmented local and/or regional Mobility as a Service (MaaS) providers across Europe.
Led by Achmea, the project UMOS aims to overcome this by building a pan-European open service platform for optimised, customised, and seamless mobility for the traveller. As a mobile and web application it will be a one-stop platform, integrating various mobility services to provide real-time service data. Digital technology innovation, as seen by the UMOS application, plays a critical part in removing obstacles to rail use and increasing the attractiveness of train transport.
Do not forget to register for our Future Mobility Open Innovation Day (18 February, 13.30-15.30 CET) to hear from thought leaders and get inspired by corporate and organisational pitches on technology innovations impacting urban mobility.
The second batch of EIT Urban Mobility´s Accelerator programme for mobility start-ups coming from all over Europe started with a virtual kick-off organised by our partner Czech PowerHUB.
Core partners of EIT Urban Mobility Innovation Hub East – PowerHUB, SPINLAB, and ZONE cluster will support five selected startups and will take care of their future business development in the upcoming six months.
In this second round of the Accelerator programme, each startup has different goals and expectations and therefore their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are specifically identified based on their solution, needs, and plans at the beginning of the programme. All teams will be guided by an experienced lead mentor who will be helping them with a variety of technical and business questions. Additionally, a series of Expert Sessions will provide the teams with specific know-how, such as Customer-Centric Approach, Sales and Marketing.
One of the strong motivation factors is also the € 15.000 in equity-free financing, that will be granted to successful Accelerator teams.
The first batch of the Accelerator programme in the Innovation Hub East in 2020 noticed great success amongst the supported startups, for example, Czech start-up TrackingForm08 – technology to monitor the status of transport infrastructure (roads & rails) using vehicle movement – managed to launch a pilot in Kladno and Prague.
The EIT Urban Mobility Innovation Days are your chance to engage with EIT Urban Mobility and mobility innovators across Europe.
There will be four online sessions, for which registration is free and it is open to any European Organisation or those with EU research agreements. Sessions will focus on four thematic Challenge Areas:
These Challenge Areas will be core to the upcoming Innovation Call for Proposals 2022, and the EIT Urban Mobility Innovation Days are a key first step in building Action and Interest Groups across all of EIT Urban Mobility’s Challenge Areas.
Trilogue negotiations have now concluded, pending the final approval of the legal texts by the European Parliament and the Council.
Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel said: ‘I welcome the political agreement on the future of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, which is an integral part of the new Horizon Europe programme 2021-2027’.
I particularly welcome the improvement made in the EIT to ensure a greater geographical reach of the EIT to tackle the innovation divide, and the fact that the EIT will launch two new Knowledge and Innovation Communities in the coming years, one operating in the field of the Cultural and Creative Sectors and Industries and one on Water, Marine and Maritime Sectors and Ecosystems. Both fields of activity are important for the Commission given their contribution to addressing existing and future societal challenges.’
Chair of EIT Governing Board, Gioia Ghezzi said: ‘We will boost the EIT Community’s impact, including in higher education, regional development, and by setting up two new EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities.’
The proposals adopted will align the EIT with Horizon Europe, the EU’s research and innovation programme for 2021 to 2027, delivering on the EU’s commitment to further boost Europe’s innovation potential. With a budget of nearly EUR 3 billion, representing a 25% increase or an EUR 600 million compared to the previous funding period, the EIT will drive the recovery of the economy as well as the green and digital transition to build a more sustainable and resilient society. The EIT will boost innovation increasing the impact of its activities and by helping 750 higher education institutions become more innovative, supporting 30 000 entrepreneurial students, bringing 4 000 innovations to the market and powering 700 start-ups.
The EIT brings leading companies, universities and research centres together across Europe in Knowledge and Innovation Communities. With its new strategy, the EIT will put increased emphasis on its regional dimension: the strengthened Regional Innovation Scheme will provide targeted support to countries who lag behind in innovation performance. Also, a new pilot initiative will increase the entrepreneurial and innovation capacity of higher education institutions. Finally, the EIT will scale up its collaboration with the European Innovation Council (EIC), which will help boost Europe’s overall innovation capacity.
Background:
The EIT is one of the three components of the ‘Innovative Europe’ pillar of the Horizon Europe programme. Horizon Europe provides the funding for the EIT under the EU’s long‑term budget 2021-2027 and defines its rationale, added value, areas of intervention and broad lines of activity. The legal basis of the EIT remains the EIT Regulation that sets out its mission, its key tasks and the framework for its functioning. The Strategic Innovation Agenda 2021-2027, in turn, outlines the strategy and priorities of the EIT for the next programming period, its objectives, key actions, activities, mode of operation, and expected impacts.
Over the last term of 2020, Alexandru Forrai, local project manager from Siemens Industry Software and Services B.V. The Netherlands, together with his colleagues Irfan Mashood Badshah and Puneeth Nekkundi Somashekar completed the testing activities related to automated valet parking solution and invited the EIT Urban Mobility Innovation Hub West to attend this demonstration, which is part of the UrbanSmartPark project.
Siemens could demonstrate once more that the dedicated software toolchain for development of automated driving functions could significantly reduce the development cycle and could allow a seamless deployment of the control algorithm on the test vehicle. Siemens was mainly responsible for the definition of verification and validation concept for the automated valet parking solution according to the functional safety standards ISO 26262 and SOTIF. The performed tests – both in the virtual environment and on the test track – could confirm the effectiveness and the efficiency of the new methodologies and solutions developed by Siemens, having a good potential to be applied by OEMs and TIER1 suppliers.
Back in December 2020, the consortium of UrbanSmartPark presented their research results at the Landungsbrücken held in Hamburg. The NFF demonstrated its Automated On-Street Valet Parking function so that citizens and press representatives were invited to take a seat in the test vehicle TEASY 3 for a demo drive. The automated driving function starts at the S-Bahn station Landungsbrücken where the driver would theoretically request the service of Automated Valet Parking. The vehicle receives the location of the next free parking spot from the back end of Fraunhofer, drives autonomously to the parking area and performs the parking maneuver. The event received very positive feedback and gathered a lot of attention from the local press as well as from the citizens of Hamburg. For more information please check UrbanSmartPark – Vehicle automation as an enabler for future customer-centric parking-related services.
This EIT Urban Mobility funded project has the following consortium partners: Škoda Auto (Czech Republic), Siemens (The Netherlands), NFF TU Braunschweig (Germany), Institute of Information Theory and Automation, Czech Republic (UTIA), Czech Technical University of Prague (ČVUT), Fraunhofer SCS (Germany) and city partners Hamburg (Germany) as well as Helmond (The Netherlands).
The virtual event “El mundo que viene: La movilidad del futuro”, organised BStartup de Banco Sabadell y Startup Valencia, will take place on the 19 January 2021 at 16:00 CET.
Matteo Consonni, Business Creation Manager at EIT Urban Mobility, will moderate a session with other high level panelists and experts in the sector:
During this session we will cover important topics, such as:
| Learn more about this event and register now! |
EIT Urban Mobility wishes to appoint external moderators/ facilitators to support our work across a portfolio of activities covering Innovation, Business Creation, Education, Citizen Engagement, City Club, Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS), and Factory. Independent external moderators/facilitators may assist in a wide array of activities such as events, meetings, workshops, etc. Skills, professional experience, and expertise linked to any of EIT Urban Mobility’s priorities are welcome.
The subject of the agreement is to develop a portfolio of moderators/facilitators for EIT Urban Mobility events. These events can have different shapes, audiences, and objectives, such as online and physical events, interactive workshops, matchmaking events, panel debates, meetings, conferences, or seminars. These can consist of big events, consisting of 250+ participants to interactive workshops with small groups.
This list of types of events is not exhaustive but includes some different formats for which we would need a moderator/facilitator or take the role of Master of Ceremony, including tasks such as chairing, moderating, debating, interviewing and presenting.
Applicants are required to indicate what type of events are experts on. They do not need to be able to cover all types of events/meetings /workshops.
Participation in this procedure is open to all interested applicants.
Note that the deadline has been extended with one day – to 20 January 2021.
All information can be found in the Request for Proposals document below:
Request for Proposals: Selection of a framework contract for moderators and event facilitators
Deadline for submissions: EXTENDED! 20 January 2021 at 16:00 Central European Time
Our flagship event of the year gathered 920 people from over 50 countries around the globe, and 67,000 people were reached over these two days by our social media. Our virtual platform hosting our first annual Summit welcomed 2,284 multiple logins, 74 exhibitors, gave the floor to 71 speakers on 9 and 10 December, and 38 speakers on 11 December for the Partners Networking Day, which was only open to partners and on invitation only.
In total, 10 hours of live video meetings were held. These live meetings have enabled up to 160 connections among the participants to our Summit.
All in all, technology allowed us once again to embrace the extended urban mobility ecosystem from a distance and to exchange insights and views on how we can contribute to make sustainable urban mobility a reality. It has also made clear that “to go fast, you should go alone, but to go far, you should go together. We believe that there is no other way than going fast together to go far”, as EIT Urban Mobility Chief Executive Officer, Maria Tsavachidis stated in her welcoming speech.
We also collected a lot of valuable feedback and many valuable insights from both speakers and participants, that makes us feel more confident about the way to follow to make sustainable urban mobility at the disposal of citizens a reality.
In the morning of 10 December, our audience had the privilege to be the first to hear the Director General of the European Commission for Transport and Mobility debating about the EU´s Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy that had been adopted the day before by the European Commission, which will pave the way towards a mobility compatible with the European climate-neutrality ambition. A strategy supporting urban mobility and making cities more liveable and citizens’ lives easier, as Henrik Hololei, Director General for Mobility and Transport at the European Commission, stated during the institutional session. We certainly understood that “cities need to be the reflection of citizens’ needs”, as Anna Lisa Boni, Secretary General of Eurocities said.
To make all this possible, further collaboration on urban mobility between the public and private sector is needed, as Karima Delli, Chairwoman of the TRAN Committee at the European Parliament, stated. This session has also been the occasion for Mohamed Mezghani, Secretary General of UITP, to describe his vision for the way we will move around in 2030: people in cities will be moving less, move more locally and mainly walk, in cities while the speed limit will be 30 km/h, with less privately-owned cars, and the road will be shared with public transport.
We also had time to reflect on how our unexpected guest of 2020, COVID-19, has impacted our lives and the ways we understand mobility and safety in urban spaces. We learned more about how entrepreneurs and startups have become this year’s heroes by working on developing solutions that could neutralise the spread of the virus.
We explored the views of young researchers on urban mobility. The researchers that are putting their ideas at the disposal of creating solutions that help organisations build more efficient and sustainable means of urban mobility. And we learnt from others who have implemented successful strategies on urban mobility, which will enable cities to provide better mobility opportunities to their citizens.
The golden closing of these very thrilling days was the InnovaCity Awards Final. Innovacity is a 2.5 day hackathon-style workshop providing participants with the essential skills of design thinking and the opportunity to apply these skills while working to solve the biggest mobility challenges became our winner for this year. Amongst all the candidates, it was HelsinKey who won the Innovacity Awards. HelsinKey helps restore people´s trust in public transport with a user engagement platform combining elements of storytelling, communication, and community interaction.
On another note, and running in parallel, on 9 December, Dorine Duives, leader of the CityFlows project, was revealed as the winner of the second prize of the EIT Awards in the category Women Leader and Entrepreneurship. Click here to read more.
The EIT Urban Mobility Summit 2020 is now behind us. This year has taught us how important it is to be connected. Therefore, the EventsAir platform where our summit was hosted, will remain open for some more days, so you will be able to continue to interact with other peers. Presentations and videos will also be made available shortly. Stay tuned!
Once again, on behalf of the EIT Urban Mobility Summit 2020 team, thanks for joining us!
This job offer has expired!
The intern for Media and Learning Management System (LMS) will be part of the Academy team and support and report to the Head of the Competence Hub and the Academy Director.
The primary focus of the intership will be help to create, edit and publish the video content which is generated internally for the needs of our online training activities (WebTV, Small Free Online Courses, MOOCs). The secondary focus will be to support the Competence Hub and our partners in the publishing of e-learning contents and courses (Small Free Online Courses, MOOCs), within the appropriate e-learning platforms. We are currently using an internal LMS based on Moodle and operating some of our online courses through Coursera, Future Learn and other partner proprietary platforms.
How to apply
To apply for this internship, please send a full application consisting of a letter of motivation highlighting how your skills or experience matches the internship requirements and a current curriculum vitae to internship@eiturbanmobility.eu.
All details can be found here: Call for applications and guidelines how to apply for Internship Media and LMS
Deadline for applications: 29 January 2021
Location: Barcelona, Spain
In the MOBY (living lab e-micromobility) project, conditions for e-micromobile usage concerning regulatory, planning, safety, legal- and financial aspects have been analysed. Several outputs and publications were created within the work-packages of the project.
Cities now count on the support of a framework to be used for the assessment of the current situation of e-micromobility in the cities useful for municipalities. Furthermore, an extensive user survey was conducted in the cities of Munich, Copenhagen, Tel-Aviv, Budapest, Barcelona and Stockholm and data were collected for informing about the typical usage forms of e-micromobility, useful for decision makers and urban planners.
Best practices and results of e-micromobile integration potentials haven been intentified and analysed with calculations and visualisations. Proposals on how transport, and particularly public transport, can be strengthened and made more attractive if e-micromobility is integrated into the traffic systems of European cities in an appropriate way have also been put forward.
Specific safety aspects of e-micromobility, inluding an analysis and understanding of main safety problems and priorities have been established based on accident frequencies, severities and suitable measures and techniques / technologies for safety improvement were derived. Finally, a conference was organised by UnternehmerTUM on 12 November 2020 which disseminated results of the MOBY project.
All related MOBY reports are now available!
Overview of e-micromobility related conditions and constraints: The specific conditions and solutions in the field of e-micromobility have been mapped. The analysis consisted of two parts, first the regulatory, planning, financial conditions for usage of these new transport modes were assessed, then the mobility related requirements including user needs and travel behaviour were discovered. Read the full report here.
European City Dialogue on Micromobility organised as a conference of the innovation project MOBY — Living lab e-micromobility: This publication summarises the conference European City Dialogue on Micromobility organised by UnternehmerTUM on 12 November 2020 above mentioned. Read the full report here.
Living lab e-micromobility – MOBY Guideline of best practices, and results of e-micromobility integration potentials: In this report, an in-depth review of research and statistics are used to illustrate how e-micromobility has become an integral part of urban mobility systems. We argue that e-micromobility should be seen as a new mode of transportation, that responds to widespread demand for multimodal urban transport. In combination with other transport modes, e-micromobility could constitute an important part of an attractive alternative to private motoring and fossil-fueled vehicles.
In line with the above, this study provides examples of e-micromobility best practices from European cities (including Tel Aviv), as well as examples of the problems and complaints that e-micromobility has been met with. As a summary of lessons learnt, we present (at the end of the report) a toolkit for regulations, policies etc. that will help release the potential of micromobility as a vital part of sustainable, intermodal urban transport. Read the full report here.
E-Micromobility Safety Assessment: This report describes the performed safety analysis, infrastructure assessment and the review of the available technologies, considering the safety main priorities, allowing the proposal of effective safety measures. Read the full report here.
By the present procurement procedure, the EIT Urban Mobility S.L., (hereby being referred to as “EIT UM”) is expecting to appoint one sole provider (hereby being referred to as “the contractor”) for the realisation of the services set in the Request for Proposals document provided below, in section 2.1.1 and are expected to be implemented as stated in Section 2.1.2.
The contractor is expected to give a one-stop-shop service to EIT UM for the render of services on the following topics:
It shall be noted that EIT Urban Mobility S.L, as part of the EIT, is funded by the European Commission. As such, all principles around financial rules and regulations are governed by Horizon Europe.
All information can be found in the Request for Proposals document below:
Request for Proposals: Payroll, administration, and bookkeeping services
Deadline for submissions: 6 January 2021 at 16:00 Central European Time
