ELABORATOR stands for ‘The European Living Lab on designing sustainable urban mobility towards climate neutral cities’. How to design sustainable urban mobility in a way that is also inclusive, safe, and affordable, paving the way for climate neutral cities? ELABORATOR has got it covered! On 7-9 June 2023, this exciting Horizon EU project kicked off in Athens, Greece.
“Globally, urban areas consume over 65% of the world’s energy, accounting for more than 70% of CO2 emissions. It is therefore important that cities act as experimentation and innovation ecosystems to help all others in their transition to become climate-neutral by 2050. The project ELABORATOR project will support cities in the transition towards climate neutrality through the promotion of zero-emission, shared, active and human-centred mobility. We will rely on Citizen-centric and data-driven approaches to articulate and design interventions for all citizens, with a particular focus on the needs of those who are vulnerable to exclusion” mentioned Dr Angelos Amditis, ELABORATOR project coordinator during the first day. The event provided many fruitful insights to the consortium, a multidisciplinary group composed of 38 partners who bring to the table their varied and exceptional expertise on the topic, working together towards implementing sustainable urban mobility and climate neutral cities. It was an opportunity to hear from the work package leaders and the Lighthouse and Follower Cities on their next points of action for the duration of the project, as well as for an exciting, hands-on workshop on the discovery and definition phases of the ELABORATOR methodology.
What is ELABORATOR?
ELABORATOR stands for ‘The European Living Lab on designing sustainable urban mobility towards climate neutral cities’. The project uses a holistic approach for planning, designing, implementing and deploying specific innovations and interventions towards safe, inclusive and sustainable urban mobility. These interventions consist of smart enforcement tools, space redesign and dynamic allocation, shared services, and integration of active and green modes of transportation.
They will be specifically co-designed and co-created with identified “vulnerable to exclusion” user groups, local authorities and relevant stakeholders. The interventions will be demonstrated in a number of cities across Europe, starting with six Lighthouse cities (Milano, Italy, Copenhagen, Denmark, Helsinki, Finland, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, Zaragoza, Spain, Trikala, Greece) and six Follower cities (Lund, Sweden, Liberec, Czech Republic, Velenje, Slovenia, Split, Croatia, Krusevac, Serbia, Ioannina, Greece) with three principal aims:
- to collect, assess and analyse user needs and requirements towards a safe and inclusive mobility and climate neutral cities;
- to collect and share rich information sets made of real data, traces from dedicated toolkits, users’ and stakeholders’ opinions among the cities, so as to increase the take up of the innovations via a twinning approach;
- to generate detailed guidelines, policies, future roadmap and built capacity for service providers, planning authorities and urban designers for the optimum integration of such inclusive and safe mobility interventions into Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs).
I-Sense Group is the project coordinator of this very promising new project and hosted a three-day Kick off Meeting in Athens, Greece on 7-9 June 2023. The event provided many fruitful insights to the consortium regarding the future steps as well as a hands-on workshop on the discovery and definition phases of the ELABORATOR methodology. Dr Angelos Amditis, the Research & Development Director at the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS) and I-Sense Group Director, Dr Vasilis Sourlas, the Smart Mobility Applied Systems TMAT responsible, Dr Anna Antonakopoulou, the Smart Mobility Applied Systems Team Leader, Jason Sioutis, the day to day ELABORATOR Project Manager and Maria Tsirigoti, dealing with the Dissemination & Communication activities on behalf of the coordination team, were present in the three-day KoM.
The ELABORATOR consortium comprises 38 partners, thirteen (13) local and regional public authorities, twelve (12) industry & business actors, nine (9) universities and research institutes and four (4) associations and NGOs who bring to the table their varied and exceptional expertise on the topic.
