COST Action

Duration: 01/03/2014 to 31/08/2016
Funding: IEE - Intelligent Energy Europe

EIP's role in the project

EIP leads the dissemination actions in the project.

To define short, medium and long-term uptake of the methodologies developed in the project in view of feasibility and as outlined by EU policy.

To identify and initiate active dialogue with target groups representatives, stakeholders and end-users.

To create the visibility of the project in main European events.

To promote the results of the project in order to facilitate better integration between different environments, such as academia, business environment and local administrations.

ABSTRACT

The COST Action aims to initiate a new collaboration framework for the various European research groups in urban transport and urban networks including sociology, transport research urban planning, architecture, geography and Information Technology (IT) science to develop a new transport paradigm based on ICT social networks and their subsequent travel behaviour.

Through this collaboration the COST Action partners are expected to focus their research on exploring the relationships among ICT social networks, social travel behaviour, and spatial configuration in particular, the goals are to explore the ways in which social activities become mobilised in space, to identify the ways in which social ties affect the integration of local public transport into urban patterns, to establish a linkage between social networks, travel behaviour and urban structure and to broaden the theoretical and practical framework of the field, taking into account both urban structure and jointly performed social activities.

The objectives of the Action are:

Develop a conceptual framework for the analysis of ICT social networks that will comply (or be compatible) with travel behaviour and mobility analysis
To foster new concepts for public transport services
To identify guidelines for collecting spatial information for urban network analysis from social networks and the community of passengers
Develop a combined conceptual framework that will integrate methods from 3 disciplines including social networks analysis, travel behaviour analysis, and spatial configuration, and urban research.
To exchange local experiences in different urban settings and to assess the implications of ICT social networks activities on public transport, the transport system and urban form
Contribute to training young researchers in an innovative interdisciplinary new research area that has implications for urban and transport planning.