Meccanica Magazine n. 4

meccanica magazine
42
ENG
“Mobility as a Service”: IP4MaaS project
The Department of Mechanical Engineering is one of the partners of
the IP4MaaS project, which is funded by the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking,
and in particular its Innovation Programme 4 (IP4), as part of
the Horizon 2020 Programme.
Over the years, Shift2Rail IP4 has funded more than 10 projects, which
have developed a wide array of digital services that aim to make
the traveler’s experience a seamless one. The technologies developed
within IP4 cover all aspects of the travel experience, such as the
shopping of travel offers, their booking, the emission and validation
of tickets, and the real-time monitoring of trips. In addition, IP4 has
defined an innovative framework that facilitates the interoperability
of Transport Service Providers’ (TSPs) services.
The ecosystem of services developed within Shift2Rail IP4 enables
the new mobility paradigm known as Mobility as a Service (MaaS),
where different public and private transportation services are seamlessly
integrated by Information Technologies.
The IP4MaaS project aims to advance the uptake of MaaS schemes
by supporting, facilitating and evaluating the demonstration of the
digital services developed within Shift2Rail IP4. The demonstrations
will be carried out in 6 sites distributed across Europe, and will
involve more than 10 transport operators, authorities and agencies.
The work carried out in IP4Maas contributes to the creation of a digital
ecosystem for door-to door travel in a seamless, multimodal and
European-wide transport system based on the railways.
IP4MaaS is developing the demonstrations’ scenarios and a thorough
assessment strategy that tackles both the performance of the
demonstrations as well as the impact of the technologies on users
and on the transport environment in urban and suburban contexts.
The project will provide recommendations regarding the promotion
and transferability of the technologies to other locations in Europe.
IP4MaaS is organizing one of the largest demonstrations of technologies
in European projects’ history and expects its findings to be
used as a baseline for future demonstrations that involve a large and
diverse group of partners.
The IP4MaaS project started in December 2020, and will end in April
2023. The demonstrations will be run in two rounds. A first round of
demonstrations has been carried out during the summer of 2022,
while a second round is planned for early 2023.
Within IP4MaaS, Politecnico di Milano’s research unit leads the workpackage
focusing on: (i) the analysis of the existing digital services
that are available in the 6 demonstration sites; (ii) the definition of
the needs and expectations of users (both travelers and TSPs); (iii)
the definition of the scenarios to be demonstrated. In addition, it
leads the activities regarding the monitoring of the ongoing integration
of the services provided by IP4MaaS TSPs into the Shift2Rail
IP4 ecosystem.
The research activities carried out by Politecnico di Milano’s team,
within IP4MaaS, are coordinated by Prof. Matteo Giovanni Rossi,
DMEC. He has also coordinated Politecnico’s teams that have contributed
to several projects carried out within Shift2Rail IP4, which
have developed some of the technologies that will be demonstrated
within IP4MaaS. Politecnico’s researchers have collaborated to the
definition and realization of the framework facilitating the interoperability
of services provided by TSPs. They have also developed several
services that support travelers during various phases of their
travel experience. More precisely, they have realized mechanisms
to, on one side, analyze the choices made by travelers when deciding
what travel solutions to buy (i.e., in the shopping phase) and,
on the other side, automatically learn their preferences and use this
information to help them select the offers that best fit them. In addition,
they have contributed to the creation of a system that enables
and integrates ride sharing (one of the new mobility paradigms that
are part of the MaaS concept) in the context of multi-modal trips. In
particular, they have developed mechanisms to monitor the execution
of rides, and the detection of disruptions (e.g., delays) that can
negatively impact the whole trip.