Problem addressed

The world is rapidly urbanising. Increasing population density in urban environments puts pressure on cities, their infrastructure and the local environment. Automobile exhaust fumes contribute to poor air quality and pollution, with knock-on negative impacts on people’s health. The COVID-19 crisis has radically changed the way we live, including the way we move. Greener, safer and more sustainable ways of moving around cities are a crucial way of reducing the negative impacts of urbanisation on people and the planet.

Innovative solution

MUV - Mobility Urban Values is a project that aims to incentivise people to make more sustainable mobility choices. The project, which is a Research and Innovation Action funded through Horizon 2020, has developed an app that tracks users’ daily mobility and awards them points when they choose sustainable modes of transport. Points become the basis for enabling different games; weekly challenges between users in the same community and team tournaments between cities, companies or universities. The best players in each competition are awarded with real gifts and discounts provided by local businesses. In May 2019, the first Sustainable City Tournament was launched, enabling competitions between eight participating cities during a period of seven weeks. Participating businesses benefit from the advertising provided by the MUV (Mobility Urban Values) platform, which increases their customer base, in turn contributing to the local economy.

The app is tailored to the mobility choices of the local community, as its features have been co-designed by local residents and business owners. Six cities across Europe of varying size and population, and with different mobility habits, initially piloted the project: Amsterdam (Netherlands), Barcelona (Spain), Fundão (Portugal), Ghent (Belgium), Helsinki (Finland) and Palermo (Italy). Given the initial low awareness of the project, outreach activities, such as workshops with residents, were necessary to engage people to download and use the app.

In line with project objectives, MUV impact indicators include sustainable mobility habits, CO2 emissions, quality of data, policies, and programs, and the level of local economic activity. Mobility data gathered via the mobile app is used to assess project impacts against context indicators that provide information on the neighbourhood and city of interest. The app collects data on mobility choices related to users’ frequent routes (e.g. home to work, home to university) before and after they started using MUV. This not only provides information on whether the app has shifted behaviours towards more sustainable modes of transport, but also allows the gathering of new data, which had previously only been available for citizens using private vehicles. At the same time, environmental monitoring stations in each neighbourhood collect data on air quality and sound levels. This data can then support the further development of the app. Instruments for data analysis are still under development, but public administrations and local transport agencies are already involved in discussions with project implementers on how to make this data accessible and useful for urban policy-making.

Key results and benefits

MUV involved more than 8 000 users who travelled a total of over 260 000 km in a sustainable way for an average improvement of 32% per user on their mobility carbon footprint. Since the beginning of the project, it is estimated that a CO2 saving of 24 tonnes has been made.

A key element of success is the multidisciplinary consortium implementing the initiative. The latter is led by PUSH, a design lab located in Palermo (Italy), and brings together 14 design, technology, industrial, and academic organisations from 8 different countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain).

The consortium has published more than ten scientific articles related to MUV's research in the areas of behaviour change, urban planning and sustainability, and game design. The CO2 saving calculation methodology has been validated according to ISO 14064-2:2019 standards and allows the emission of CO2 credits.

Potential for mainstreaming

MUV is one of the five winners of the 2019 Better Together Award, an international competition organised by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment to showcase and reward collaborative innovations addressing local climate challenges.

The project hopes to expand its consortium and become part of EU and US network ecosystems in the field of mobility, to increase its reach. MUV has managed to establish new links with research and innovation projects to share knowledge about the project approach, as well as learning material. The MUV consortium has participated in a number of relevant EU and global events in the mobility and transport domains.

Key conditions for a successful transfer to other contexts are a strong collaborative approach and financial sustainability. MUV’s potential for transferability is evidenced by the success of the two international ad-hoc Open Calls (the first in 2018, the second in 2020) launched by the app founders to spread the innovative solution to more communities. As many as 38 additional cities have now joined the project and adapted it to their specific local context. In alignment with the European Commission’s interest in turning Horizon 2020 research projects into enterprises, project implementers have started to develop a business plan that will enable MUV to achieve financial independence after the end of Horizon 2020 funding. In the long-term, MUV hopes to receive interest and sponsorship from private companies and municipalities interested in promoting sustainability through a ‘neighbourhood approach’ to urban mobility.