Smart and Mobile Work in Growth Regions

Smart Commuting project explored new ways of combining work and life with new intelligent transport system services and developed new concepts to support sustainable CO2-free commuting and mobile, multi-locational work. The mobility of the workforce is increasing due to technology development, commuting and the nature of work, which has many consequences as long commuting may decrease the productivity of work and leave less time for relaxation, resulting in lowered wellbeing. Cities also have to address commuting when planning technical solutions, developing services and calculating their finance schemes. Therefore, the first objective of this project was to identify the changing needs of mobile workers for transport. The second objective was to support the implementation of sustainable and intelligent transport services that meet these needs.

The project was done as the collaboration of researchers and company partners from Austria, Finland, and Switzerland. Aalto University acted as the coordinator, and AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, tbw research GesmbH, and ZHAW Zürich University of Applied Sciences were research partners. The company and regional partners were: Virta Ltd. (Liikennevirta Oy), AC2SG
Software Oy, Kyyti Group Ltd. (Tuup Oy), ISTmobil GmbH, Growth Corridor Finland (GCF), and the Office of Mobility in the Canton of Basel-Stadt. Smart Commuting - Smart and Mobile Work in Growth Regions project (2016-2018, www.smartcommuting.eu) is one of the projects in joint programme JPI Urban Europe (www.jpi urbaneurope.eu). The programme was created in 2010 to
address the global urban challenges of today. In Finland, the project was funded by Business Finland.

The consortium collected data through surveys, interviews, collecting documents, making observations and having workshops in Austria, Finland and Switzerland to evaluate how new transport services meet the evolving needs of mobile workers. In addition, simulations were used to provide decision support for stakeholders to address urban planning and governance structures' challenges. Implementations in large commuting areas were pivotal aspects of this project as they helped scale up our partners' operations, get experiences about the needs of users and also discover some common grounds for governance and city planning policies.