Methods, pilot platforms and recommendations for active mobility and sustainable lifestyle

SimpliCITY - Marketplace for user-centered sustainability services

Veronika Hornung-Prähauser, Diana Wieden-Bischof

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9783755752578
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9783755765516
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

In the past decades, European cities have set ambitious goals for low carbon transition, but regional sustainability services (RSUS) lack an active user base. Only 15% of consumers take sustainability of these into account during a purchase and "rebound effect" can reach 80%. At the current pace, RSUS will fail to develop into sustainable business models and cities' efforts remain insufficient to meet targets set for 2050. The European project "SimpliCITY" (JPI Urban Europe; running from 10/2018-6/2021) aims to boost the digital competences of the urban communities in Salzburg, AT and Uppsala, SE. Both pilot cities, Salzburg and Uppsala, are so-called smart cities with different action fields, targets and coordination offices.This report informs about the activities and results of SimpliCITY in which a hybrid approach was developed, using both physical and digital participation and incentive methods and tools. SimpliCITY examined how to increase the usage rate of regional sustainability services and how to drive the community towards these services by means of two novel web platforms and applications ("Stadtmacherei Salzburg" and "Cykla med Pelle"). In the long term, they will lead to a better visibility of regional sustainability services. More information about the project and its result can be found at: https://www.simplicity-project.eu.

1 INTRODUCTION - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In the past decades, European cities have set ambitious goals for low carbon transition, but regional sustainability services (RSUS) lack an active user base. Only 15% of consumers take sustainability of these into account during a purchase and “rebound effect” can reach 80%. At the current pace, RSUS will fail to develop into sustainable business models and cities’ efforts remain insufficient to meet targets set for 2050. SimpliCITY aims to boost the digital competences of the urban communities in Salzburg, AT and Uppsala, SE. Both pilot cities, Salzburg and Uppsala, are so-called smart cities with different action fields, targets and coordination offices.¹

This report informs about the activities and results of the European project “SimpliCITY” (JPI Urban Europe; running from 10/2018-6/2021) in which a hybrid approach was developed, using both physical and digital participation and incentive methods and tools. SimpliCITY examined how to increase the usage rate of regional sustainability services and how to drive the community towards these services by means of two novel web platforms and applications (“Stadtmacherei Salzburg” and “Cykla med Pelle”). In the long term, they will lead to a better visibility of regional sustainability services. More information about the project and its result can be found at: www.simplicity-project.eu.

1.1 Objective of the final SimpliCITY report

This document serves to provide a thorough understanding of the different methods and approached used during the various steps of the SimpliCITY project. Furthermore, it gives an overview of the pilot platforms and apps in Salzburg and Uppsala and offers recommendations relevant for initiatives that aim to use digital methods for promoting behaviour change towards sustainable urban mobility, particularly active mobility.

Besides, a pre-study (Del. 2.1) conducted at the beginning of the project also serves as framework for the content of this document. The pre-study provides a thorough understanding of the theoretical models and insights into (digital) incentivisation methods, commons-based business models and the relevance of principles of behavioural design for sustainability services and target-group specific innovation barriers and learning goals. It was intended to lay out scientific foundations in the interdisciplinary field of SimpliCITY and was then used and integrated in planning the intervention designs, platform functionalities and the guidelines for better uptake of smart city services to be developed in other work packages.

1.2 Structure of the document

The final project report is organised in the following chapters:

• Chapter 2 offers insight into the different approaches and methods used in the various stages of the development of the SimpliCITY framework, like the organisation of hackathons as an open innovation and co-creation method.
• Chapter 3 presents the two different city platforms and apps (Stadtmacherei Salzburg city app and Uppsala city app – Cykla med Pelle) invented during the SimpliCITY project.
• Chapter 4 provides a comprehensive insight on policy recommendations and focuses on the themes of city governance, behaviour change methods, digital and other services, and legal and ethical aspects.

Figure 1: Structure of the final SimpliCITY project report Source: Diana Wieden-Bischof, 2021

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¹ Information about the Smart City Salzburg can be found on https://www.stadt-salzburg.at/internet/websites/smartcity.htm, information about the Smart City Uppsala on https://international.uppsala.se/content/the-smart-city/.

2 METHODS AND PROCESSES

The purpose of this section is to provide an insight into the different approaches and methods used in the various stages of the development for the SimpliCITY framework. In particular, the section illustrates the method and results of the open innovation and co-creation approach hackathons, multiplier stakeholder mapping and their engagement process plans as well as the gamification and nudging approach.

This study deals with a new approach of motivating and guiding people’s decisions in the direction of using sustainable solutions.

2.1 Open innovation and co-creation approaches

In the last decades, many European cities and smart city initiatives have started to develop new regional and sustainable services to help achieve CO2 savings and the climate targets set for 2050. Unfortunately it is still unclear how to increase the trust of the citizens and how they can be motivated to use these new intelligent services for the benefit of the climate. What would help people in their everyday lives to change routines and behaviours as well contribute to a smart sustainable city lifestyle?

Therefore, SimpliCITY project aims to integrate and to interact with as many people as possible in order to jointly develop a solution for the pilot cities of Salzburg and Uppsala and its citizens. According to this, we used an open innovation and co-creation approach within the project and participated in several hackathons in Austria and Sweden in order to get insights and to benefit from the expertise from students, start-up companies and experts and interested people.

2.1.1 Purpose of the hackathons

The word hackathon is a so-called neologism, combing the words hack or hacking and marathon and was used for the first time in the year 1999 in the course of a software engineering event (Pogačar and Žižec, 2016). A hackathon is an event that is lasting usually for several hours or days and where clearly defined problems need to be solved or predefined topics are covered. Therefore, close collaboration between the participants is necessary and emerging (Zapico et al., 2013).

An essential part of every hackathon is the creativity in solving problems of the individual participants. Various experts with heterogeneous qualifications and skills (often free of charge) are required to develop a finished product, service, process, prototype, idea or concept at the end.

Hacking has in recent years been applied to a great deal to non-software or even to non-computer matters. One such area – also highly relevant for SimpliCITY – is urban development, where the collaborative approach of hackathons is applied to different urban problems like overpopulation, inequality, pollution or sustainability.

Another valuable property of hackathon is the fact that problems and solutions are usually up to-date and mostly not yet implemented. As SimpliCITY and the platform developed therein aims to make use of the newest technology available, hackathon can have significant impact at different stages.

While the major part of technology research and development is done by the project team, hackathons open up this research process to a skilled community. That brings several benefits:

• New and not considered ideas regarding platform structure
• Novel opportunities, methods and software tools for the implementation
• Early fault detection
• Use cases and opportunities for future development or follow-up projects

Finally, the hackathons organised both in Salzburg and Uppsala open our own research process to a wider community to enable a correct evaluation of the potential of these new technologies. Therefore, a guideline and a set of technical tools was openly available to hackathon participants for preparation and solution design.

Additionally, the solutions designed during the hackathons will be subject to open source access, to be reused by the project team and/or other interested third parties without costs.

2.1.2 Participation of SimpliCITY in hackathons

The challenge proposed for the social hackathons, which were organised by local institutions such as the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg, the initiative “Industry meets Makers” Austria (IMM, https://www.industrymeetsmakers.com) or the City of Uppsala and the Sustainability InnoCenter Sweden (SIC, http://sustainabilityinnocenter.com), was about identifying the requirements for the briefings of the hackathons.

Hackathon at the University of Applied Science in Salzburg

One social hackathon took place at the University of Applied Science Salzburg from the 28th of February to the 2nd of March 2019. It was promoted as an ‘initiative to inspire and create innovative technology and tools that we care about in our daily lives’. Within 48 hours, voluntary social innovators, developers and designers worked together with students of various areas (e.g. Social Innovation, Design and Product Management, etc.) to answer the overall question: How can technology help us create social, behavioural, and practical change for societal challenges? To break it down, the hackathon had a selection of 15 diverse social topics (for more details see https://social-hackathon.fh-salzburg.ac.at/2019-02-28).

Figure 2: Social hackathon 2019 at the FH-Salzburg Source: https://social-hackathon.fh-salzburg.ac.at/2019-02-28; 28.07.2021

The 48 hours of the hackathon were divided into ideation-, design- and coding phases. The outcome of the hackathon had to be a prototype of smart digital solutions for one concrete societal challenge. While the participants had access to a set of expert advisors and mentors from local organisations, two SimpliCITY project members (Petra Stabauer, Salzburg Research and Thomas Layer-Wagner, Polycular) came into action as jurors at the final presentations of each hackathon team. The hackathon finished with a showcase and a pitching competition where the ideas had to be presented in front of Petra Stabauer and Thomas Layer-Wagner and other...

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• Contributions to this final report
• Table of Figures
• 1. Introduction - Executive Summary
• 2. Methods and processes
• 3. Pilot platforms
• 4. SimpliCITY Policy Recommendations
• 5. References
• 6. Innovation and Value Creation Reports at a glance
• Copyright