Topic: The TIE Project (Transportation Innovation Ecosystems) analyzes the actors, networks, and environments of innovations in the domain of urban transportation, i.e., the conditions that enable change with regard to the way we move in our cities. It does so comparatively in three European cities: Budapest, Prague, and Munich. TIE is a term used here to describe the diverse nature of the system's components and resources that act as a driving force for innovation in urban mobility. TIEs have many components, related to history, culture, legal/regulatory frameworks, education, science, and finance of a place, thus they are city-specific. In addition, some of the innovation system’s components are vital for the smooth functioning of the system—their presence and good working order are “necessary conditions.” Other components are “nice to have,” but not essential, and it is important to distinguish between the two.
It is crucial to understand how the TIE of every city works. Thus, we are constructing and implementing an innovative methodology to map, analyze, and enhance the TIE—a methodology that is applicable to any city or region. This methodology draws on existing expertise developed and successfully implemented to map National Innovation Ecosystems worldwide. It is based on interactive workshops; owing to the Corona pandemic, these have been supplemented by a web survey. In particular, the project aims to identify anchors (key actors, strengths) and processes in each city that are crucial to the development of transport innovation.
The aim is to create a strategic infrastructure for urban policy management in the field of urban mobility. This is done by defining tailored policy recommendations to improve the TIE in each of the investigated cities. The project suggests a service that enhances the ability of city leaders, policy makers, industry partners, entrepreneurs, scholars, civic stakeholders, citizens, and others to collectively agree on urban policy decisions that serve mobility interests, are system-wide in their nature, and exploit synergies to achieve agreed TIE goals.
The project is part of the EU-funded “EIT Urban Mobility” framework and its Strategic Objectives and City Challenges. In other words, this methodology will help identify creative, pro-innovation policies to enhance overall competitiveness in cities—toward meeting EIT Urban Mobility Strategic Objectives and City Challenges.
Researchers: Alain Thierstein, Fabian Wenner, Diane Arvanitakis
Principal: EIT Urban Mobility
Cooperation partners: Technion - Israel Institute of Technology (lead partner), Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Czech Technical University in Prague, Institute of Information Theory and Automation, LHM, SWM/MVG