Rapid environmental changes are impacting our cities and require rapid and innovative actions. The Rapid Applications for Transport (RAPTOR) Programme seeks to do just this via its open call for
proposals. The RAPTOR call for proposals matches European cities facing urban mobility challenges with start-ups with innovative mobility solutions. While each of the city challenges and proposed solutions are different, the common theme woven throughout is the urgency of the transition to more sustainable transport.
RAPTOR 2024 winners
EIT Urban Mobility is excited to announce the winners of the 2024 RAPTOR Competition. Over 180 applications were received for the 13 city challenges. Following a rigorous two-phase evaluation process, we are pleased to present the 13 winners: Hilo, Rastel.io Solutions, Don Cicleto, DriveSimSolutions, Greenroads, Mapular, Dreamwaves, Nudgd, WISP Solutions, LOKI, GaiaHub, OrchyMG, and Floware.
Following the agile methodology of the programme, the projects kicked off in August and will run until December 2024. During these 5 months, winners will work closely with their respective city contact to develop and tailor their solutions to the city specific requirements. Then they will be tested and validated in real-life demonstrations.
The city challenges and innovative solutions for RAPTOR 2024
Bacău, Romania + Hilo
In Bacău, seniors (approximately 35% of the population) face mobility challenges due to limitations of traditional transportation options, which often present limitations due to physical demands, accessibility issues, and affordability concerns. This, in turn, can lead to social isolation, reduced mobility, and negative impacts on physical and mental well-being. Despite developments in its cycling infrastructure there lacks a strong bike culture, and seniors might not possess the skills, confidence, or motivation to ride for transportation or recreation. Therefore, the city needs to find ways to encourage and support the elderly to use bikes, as well as to improve the quality and design of the bike infrastructure, to make it more accessible and convenient.
UK based startup Hilo will work with the City of Bacau to improve the safety of elderly cyclists and boost their confidence using their Intelligent Road Illumination System (IRIS). IRIS offers 360-degree protection around the vehicle by projecting light onto the road surface and directionally from the front and rear. Using addressable LEDs controlled by a wireless-enabled module connected to a user’s device, IRIS receives input signals from various sensors, including AI image processing, steering, and braking. Should a vehicle or pedestrian come too close, IRIS will automatically flash intensely to warn the offending vehicle while alerting the rider through integrated camera feeds, audible alarms, and haptic feedback.
Brasov, Romania + Rastel.io Solutions
The historical centre of Brasov is under constant traffic congestion. Three main factors contribute to this situation: school mobility, delivery vehicles and tourists and local visitors searching for parking spots. Seeking to promote a more efficient and sustainable logistics model in the inner city, the municipality is committed to implementing solutions that reduce the contribution of delivery traffic to congestion and pollution within the historic centre.
Romanian startup Rastel.io Solutions will pilot its automated e-cargo bike rental service, leveraging their existing smart and secure bike parking system that allows people to register and gain access to a fleet of e-cargo bikes to rent. The solution easily allows users to secure, monitor, and automatically give access to the e-cargo fleet as well as physical containers which offer protection against theft, vandalism, and bad weather conditions while also offering charging options.
Brussels Capital Region, Belgium + Don Cicleto
The new strategic Brussels Capital Region 2020 mobility plan, “Good Move,” introduced the implementation of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs). The region has been divided into 50 different neighbourhoods where through traffic is discouraged and confined to the main axes, encouraging walking and micro-mobility within the LTN. The aim is to improve residents’ quality of life, road safety, and reduce car dependence in the city. The challenge is to provide a solution for logistics providers to maintain operational efficiency in LTNs, while fostering public support and optimisation of the LTNs.
Spanish startup Don Cicleto will work to revolutionise last-mile delivery within Brussels’ Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) by installing strategically placed nano-hubs, to facilitate the rapid transition of goods from conventional delivery vehicles to cargo bikes, significantly reducing traffic congestion and emissions.
Fingal County, Ireland + DriveSimSolutions
Over the past few years, there has been an increase in the number of serious injuries and fatalities due to road collisions. To address this, the County is planning to implement School Streets/Quiet Streets in some areas. This approach allows residents and business owner to access residential/local streets but restricts other traffic, creating safer, cleaner, and more active travel friendly streets. To assess the impact of School Streets/Quiet Streets, Fingal County Council is interested in a solution to collect the data on traffic volume, patterns, movements, speed, parking, driving behaviour, modal share, air quality and noise pollution.
Belgian startup DriveSimSolutions will pilot its solution that integrates drone technology and artificial intelligence to simultaneously observe various metrics like traffic volume, origins and destinations, all road user trajectories, speeds, modal share, air quality data, and even near-conflict detections. With the ability to conduct evaluations before, during, and after the intervention, this technology offers an efficient and replicable means of gathering data for assessing the effectiveness of school streets in promoting active travel and enhancing urban mobility.
Graz, Austria + Mapular
Every incident in the operation of the Graz Linien, such as a grazing of another vehicle or a passenger fall, must be documented by the drivers in the form of an analogue accident form. Currently, the data is not digitally processed or analysed, which means that no accident hotspots can be derived.
German startup Mapular‘s SmartDrive AI is a pioneering platform designed to improve road safety and the work of all Graz Linien drivers. For drivers, it facilitates real-time accident reporting, GPS-based location marking, and photo uploads. By integrating the data with sensors, cameras, live movement and weather data, sensitive areas are analysed and highlighted in real time for the drivers to prevent future accidents. In case of an accident, an intuitive, and multilingual emergency procedure and post-accident feedback are given. For city officials, the cutting-edge platform offers a dashboard with real-time data, accident pattern recognition, hotspot identification, and predictive modelling for future incidents.
Ghent, Belgium + Greenroads
Enhancing road safety for all road users, particularly pedestrians and cyclists, is a crucial objective for the City of Ghent’s Mobility Department. To effectively design safer road infrastructure, comprehensive insights into traffic patterns at accident-prone intersections and intersections that feel unsafe, are essential. While the department currently collects data on traffic volumes and registered accidents, it lacks detailed information about traffic flows, unauthorised manoeuvres, near accidents, noninjury accidents and other crucial factors influencing safety.
Maltese startup Greenroads’ solution Greenflow offers a cost-effective, automated solution to boost traffic safety and infrastructure improvements through video analysis. Leveraging video footage from Ghent, their software extracts detailed insights on traffic flows, and road user behaviours. Key features include traffic reports, mode recognition, heatmap generation, and trajectories that indicate near accident detection that will put the city in an even stronger position to make evidence-based decisions to enhance road infrastructure and reduce fatalities.
Helsinki, Finland + Dreamwaves
Current accessibility information is very limited in detail and actual data required for designing fully accessible door-to-door routes, is missing. EU regulations will require mobility hubs to provide accessibility information. Collecting and keeping these types of information up to date in scale is challenging. More automated methods than a person going around writing down and updating status information are therefore needed.
Austrian startup Dreamwaves will upgrade their augmented reality app by adding a user interface that allows for quick annotation of accessibility features. Users can annotate obstacles manually or through an automated machine learning algorithm that identifies obstacles, such as construction zones or misplaced e-scooters, directly on the scene. These inputs feed into a content management backend, together with existing map layers. This approach ensures the integration of real-time, precise accessibility features necessary for route planning for vulnerable groups and logistical operations.
Košice, Slovakia + WISP Solutions
Košice’s traffic management system faces several interconnected challenges. The city centre relies heavily on outdated traffic signals, many dating back to the 1990s and lacking modern control capabilities. While recent projects modernised tram-related infrastructure, other road users haven’t benefited from prioritisation features. This, coupled with inefficient traffic flow, leads to congestion, and potentially hinders timely responses to emergencies.
French startup WISP Solutions’ AI-driven traffic light management system leverages real-time data and existing infrastructure, with the aim of reducing congestion, prioritising public and emergency vehicles, and cutting CO2 emissions.
Konya, Türkiye + Nudgd
In Konya, nearly 61% of the population lives in urban areas. Over the past decade, the number of registered private vehicles in Konya has notably risen. Because the city has expanded and people aren’t accustomed to changing from one mode of transport to another, more people are driving their own cars instead of using public transport. This has resulted in fewer trips where people use different forms of transport for a single journey. Multi-modal transportation should be encouraged to reduce the increasing use of private vehicles because of the horizontal development of Konya city over large areas and to support sustainable mobility.
Nudgd‘s Smart Nudges platform is an advanced solution in the realm of sustainable transportation, utilising behavioural science and nudging techniques to promote active transport choices such as biking, walking, or public transportation. By combining the stand-alone platform with an integrated version of behavioural science-driven nudges into widely used digital interfaces and public screens, Nudge aims to foster a culture of multimodal transportation. This integration ensures high visibility and engagement, driving a significant shift towards environmentally friendly commuting options.
Las Rozas de Madrid, Spain + LOKI
The Municipality of Las Rozas de Madrid lacks updated data on the accessibility of its pedestrian infrastructure, particularly sidewalks, crossings, and intersections with other transportation networks. This information is essential for ensuring the city welcomes and caters to everyone, including elderly residents and people with reduced mobility. Currently, data are absent regarding crossing details like width, ramps, slopes, markings, signage, and even the positioning of nearby street furniture. Additionally, safety concerns around intersections, such as vehicles bypassing buses at crossings and visibility obstructions, remain undocumented. Las Rozas needs a comprehensive data collection effort encompassing the physical accessibility of its entire pedestrian infrastructure, including detailed assessments of crossings, intersections, and their connection to other networks.
Italian startup LOKI‘s solution ‘Asfalto Sicuro’ is an AI-driven system installed on a vehicle, to identify, geolocate, and classify road defects. Pedestrian crossings will be geolocated accurately, therefore the output will be easily integrated into the city’s Geographic Information System (GIS). For this project, LOKI will use a dedicated camera, for automatic detection of access to crosswalks, identifying ramps, gaps, or obstacles. An accessibility index will be associated to each crosswalk, according to parameters agreed with the stakeholders. Furthermore, it will also be possible to identify defects on crosswalks, such as potholes, dangerous for pedestrians.
Liepāja, Latvia + GaiaHub
In Liepāja the primary challenge is addressing CO2 emissions stemming from private transport, which contributes to a significant 46% of the city’s overall emissions. The existing data gathering systems, are not efficient or integrated. These inefficiencies hinder the city’s ability to precisely monitor and manage emissions from individual vehicles. A cohesive integration of systems is necessary to leverage this data comprehensively for real-time emission monitoring and control. For the City of Liepāja, the goal is to enhance the current traffic control and monitoring infrastructure to specifically target and address CO2 emissions from road transport.
Estonian startup GaiaHub‘s solution delivers high-accuracy license plate recognition using video data. The system utilises cameras equipped with sophisticated image processing capabilities to identify vehicle license plates upon entry and exit of designated zones in the city. By linking plate data to a vehicle registry, the solution can extract specific vehicle characteristics (type, model year, and fuel type) together with traffic density data from existing urban sensors, which will be used to calculate precise CO2 emission levels using the SUMO emission calculator.
Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal + Orchy MG
Currently, the local mobility platform (MOB+) in Vila Nova de Gaia offers limited information for those travelling on foot, presenting a challenge for both residents and visitors in selecting the most suitable and sustainable travel option. Only 10% of commuters in the city currently choose to walk or cycle, with 70% opting for private motor vehicles. One of the key objectives for the city is to enhance the MOB+ platform’s value and encourage its use, nudging users towards active modes of transport. Vila Nova de Gaia is seeking solutions that could be integrated into the platform and help users to identify walking and cycling routes while providing information on pavement conditions, safety, lighting, and elevation.
UK startup Orchy MG’s solution, MARKED, identifies and highlights the safest cycling and walking routes—those away from heavy traffic, well-lit, with good road conditions, and less pollution. This information is integrated into the routing system API and supported by colour-coded wayfinding.
Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain + Floware
Vitoria-Gasteiz has an extensive 180-kilometre network of bike lanes, making it a highly bike-friendly city. The city offers around 11,500 on-street bike parking spaces, along with VGbiziz, a secure bike parking service. More than 14,000 bicycles are already registered in the public bicycle registry. Despite its position as a cycling leader, the city lacks precise data on cycling habits and the utilisation of its existing bike infrastructure. The city requires a solution for bicycle traceability to enhance bike traffic monitoring capabilities, improve security, and optimise cycling parking infrastructure utilisation.
French startup Floware will deploy Bluetooth and computer vision-enabled sensors to collect data on cycling habits, infrastructure utilisation, and active transportation modes. This data provides valuable insight into traffic patterns allowing for informed decisions on optimising bike lanes, enhancing safety measures, and promoting sustainable urban mobility practices. With accurate and real-time data on cycling activities, Vitoria-Gasteiz can improve traffic management, allocate resources efficiently, and enhance overall urban mobility infrastructure to meet the needs of residents effectively.
RAPTOR 2025
If you are a city looking for a solution to a niche mobility challenge and are interested in becoming a part of RAPTOR for 2025, please complete an EoI form. Expressions of Interest close 15 October 2024.
RAPTOR Impact
To learn more about the results of RAPTOR in 2023, check out this impact story ‘RAPTOR 2023 offers solutions to urban mobility challenges‘.
