Current Projects:
Act Now. Active Mobility Alliance (ActNow)
In addition to taking into account ecological and economic aspects of sustainable, active mobility, the health effects of actively travelling to work for employees in companies form the core of ActNow. Building on the GISMO project and other research results from MdZ, ActNow aims to demonstrate the full potential of active mobility in the context of commuting to work and the associated everyday routes, in particular those that accompany children, and to realise this in the test area of Salzburg and Upper Austria as well as in individual large companies throughout Austria. The application of evidence-based planning methods and planning tools is another integrative component of the project. An intersectoral policy board will accompany the ActNow project.
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The project is an accompanying study on the preparation and implementation of a nationwide, technology-supported mobility survey, funded by the BMVIT. Up-to-date and proven survey technologies and procedures will be analyzed with their advantages and disadvantages and put together in a modular way to a viable survey concept for the call for tenders.
It is a broad involvement of all relevant actors, such as Federal states, cities, ÖBB, ASFINAG, to adapt the requirements of a nationwide mobility survey to the needs. The project also includes the quality assurance and plausibility checks during and after the survey phase, as well as the quality assurance of the weighting and extrapolation and the data analysis.
According to the "Long-term Strategy 2050 - Austria", the mobility turnaround in Austria is to be completed by the year 2050. The accompanying shift from private motorized transport to public transport as well as to active and new means of transport raises the question whether the currently planned further developments in public transport result in a sufficiently attractive offer and are in turn suitable to meet the increasing demand or whether and where capacity bottlenecks are to be expected.
Goal of the EmUVer project is the development of scenarios of the mobility turnaround and the elaboration of recommendations for the technical implementation in the traffic model by ÖBB-PV AG in order to simulate the interactions between demand and supply within the framework of these scenarios and to be able to identify bottlenecks.
LMC19 - Effects of COVID-19 on the last mile of sustainable transport systems in East Tyrol (LMC19)
The Interreg Europe project Last Mile with the aim of finding sustainable, flexible transport systems for the last mile in the transport chain in tourism was successfully completed in mid-2020 and was awarded the contract for a further one-year project in spring 2021. In this project expansion, partners from five different regions (AT, BG, ES, LU, SK) exchange ideas about the effects of COVID-19 on mobility in their regions and develop new solutions for the future. The status quo of flexible transport systems in the partner region East Tyrol and the effects of COVID-19 on general mobility behavior as well as possible strategies for the recovery of the situation caused by the pandemic for flexible transport systems and, subsequently, also for all public transport analyzed in exchange with regional stakeholders.
The aim of the research is the analysis of the status quo and the development of an action plan including suggestions for the future. The mentioned recommendations for action on the subject of mobility and the impact of COVID-19 on flexible transport systems (and public transport in general) in the partner region East Tyrol are intended to show opportunities and measures for all actors (municipalities, companies, institutions, etc.) in the field of mobility for post-Corona.
TRA:WELL - Transport & Wellbeing (TRA:WELL)
A high percentage of children around the world currently do not reach the WHO recommended level of physical activity, which is essential for children's physical and mental health and cognitive development. They increasingly spend their leisure time indoors instead of moving independently outdoors. The dominance of motorised traffic, the lack of child-friendly infrastructure and the lack of open spaces reinforce the effect of domestication. This is reflected in a decline in active mobility on school and leisure trips. Reversing these trends requires deeper insights into mechanisms of behaviour change, perceptions of the built environment, mobility-related decisions and the impact on children's well-being.
The TRA:WELL project investigates how active and independent mobility is related to children's well-being. In doing so, the subjective perception of the built environment is analysed and a child-centred perspective is used to work out how urban environments can promote child-friendly mobility. The study takes into account the overall physical activity behaviour of children and shows how active forms of mobility contribute to the fulfilment of physical activity recommendations. At the interface of quantitative and qualitative methods, students develop a child-friendly method to describe the complexity of mobility-related decisions.
The project results shed light on important arguments in the context of child-friendly mobility for parents and decision-makers and provide in-depth insight into the child's perspective. From a scientific perspective, valuable data and methods are generated. Through its transdisciplinary approach, the project makes an important contribution to the intersectoral cooperation of transport/mobility and health.