Supporting sustainable and smart urban mobility in Europe (CIVITAS)

This Destination includes activities addressing safe and smart mobility services for passengers and goods.

This Destination contributes directly to the Strategic Plan’s Key Strategic Orientations ‘Green transition’, ‘Digital transition’ and ‘A more resilient, competitive, inclusive and democratic Europe’.

In line with the Strategic Plan, the overall expected impact of this Destination is to contribute to the ‘Multimodal systems and services for climate-neutral, smart and safe mobility’.

The main impacts to be generated by topics under this Destination are:

Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility (CCAM)

1. Improved mobility for people and goods in all weather conditions, ensuring safe, shared, inclusive, affordable, attractive, and accessible door-to-door mobility, for private and public transport in mixed traffic and confined areas, as well as open roads.
2. Seamless integration of CCAM solutions into existing transport ecosystems to ensure interoperability, promote multimodality, enhance traffic safety, catering to diverse user needs and behaviours.
3. Resilient, climate-neutral, and sustainable mobility solutions with reduced carbon footprints, resulting in greener, less congested, cost-effective, and demand-responsive transport systems.
4. Increased competitiveness of the transport system using secure and hyper-advanced technologies such as real-time perception, situational awareness, and decision-making systems, based on trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (including Edge and Generative AI), satellite navigation, smart traffic management, and tools for software development for CCAM applications.

Multimodal and sustainable transport systems for passengers and goods

1. Enhanced resilience of transport networks through improved operational efficiency for both passenger and intermodal freight transport, future-proofed mobility systems supporting EU competitiveness while ensuring affordable and accessible transport for all passengers.

Safety and resilience

1. Drastic reduction in road fatalities for all types of users, especially on rural areas
2. Improved resilience of the public transport system via the use of AI
3. Advanced technologies and methods for improved reliability in complex environments for aviation

Legal entities established in China are not eligible to participate in both Research and Innovation Actions (RIAs) and Innovation Actions (IAs) falling under this destination. For additional information please see “Restrictions on the participation of legal entities established in China” found in General Annex B of the General Annexes.

Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:

• Valorisation, cross-fertilisation and dissemination of innovative solutions for sustainable urban mobility, from EU and national projects through the CIVITAS initiative;
• Contribution to the accelerated deployment of innovative urban mobility solutions, increasing competitiveness of European urban mobility actors while achieving European mobility policy objectives.
• Cities are equipped with a relevant knowledge, necessary soft and technical skills to successfully deploy smart and sustainable mobility solutions, for passenger and freight.
• A vibrant community of urban innovative mobility stakeholders is maintained and strengthened.

Scope:

Effective and efficient urban mobility systems are the backbone of competitive cities, without them the economy comes to a standstill. While cities are going through a rapid digital, green and social transformation, local and regional authorities play bigger roles and take on greater responsibilities in contributing to the prosperity, climate-neutrality and competitiveness of the European Union.

However, the deployment of innovative sustainable mobility solutions has been hampered by fragmentation of the support to cities at regional, national and EU level, lack of resources for experimentation with new approaches, insufficient knowledge on research results and innovative solutions, and difficulties for urban stakeholders to exchange knowledge, experiences and lessons learned, including providing feedback to policy makers and the research community.

The aim of this coordination and support action is to address the barriers to the deployment of innovative urban mobility projects’ results through a comprehensive and collaborative approach, while further strengthening the European urban mobility innovation ecosystem.

Taking into account the previous CIVITAS coordination and support action^[1], in collaboration with, and avoiding overlaps with, the Cities Mission Platform^[2] and other relevant initiatives, the action is expected to address - in a clear and streamlined approach - all of the following aspects:

• Harvesting and spreading innovative urban mobility solutions, and speeding up the take-up of the related projects results by European cities by:
  • setting up capacity building and a replication programme, to facilitate twinning, mutual learning and peer-to-peer exchanges, which should include cooperation with industry, SMEs and start-ups, while ensuring a feedback to policy loop;
  • optimising the common, user-friendly CIVITAS project evaluation framework, with dedicated support for its implementation by the projects that are part of the CIVITAS initiative;
  • optimising and promoting the CIVITAS website as the main knowledge and exchange platform for the European urban mobility community by means of digital tools and structured management approaches to disseminate information about the EU’s urban mobility research and innovation developments and results.
• Developing and strengthening the urban mobility community in the EU and Associated Countries and actively engaging stakeholders across sectors and governance levels to facilitate common learning and exchange by:
  • facilitating and supporting the Educational and Youth network,
  • facilitating and optimising the support to national CIVITAS networks (CIVINETS),
  • supporting R&I projects’ clustering, and the coordination of living lab activities,
  • organising the CIVITAS Forum, and supporting the organisation of the Urban Mobility Days,
  • under guidance of the Commission services, organising the CIVITAS Politicians Exchange Forum,
  • facilitating the exchange between cities, urban public transport authorities and the industry, SMEs and start-ups,
  • enlarging the CIVITAS network.

Since 2002 CIVITAS acts as an open platform that facilitates research, the uptake of innovative solutions, the validation of research results, the exchange of knowledge and best practices, and common learning in the area of urban mobility and transport. The project selected under this topic will help to ensure the long-term support for the R&I urban mobility projects offering governance, and an organisational and logistical framework that guarantees the wide dissemination and take up of urban mobility project results.

[1] CIVITAS MUSE | CIVITAS

[2] NetZeroCities