SOTERIA, a new Horizon Europe project set out to improve road safety for pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists
As the numbers of accidents on European roads reveal a downward trend in the last decades, while the mobility landscape in cities is rapidly evolving, the European Commission (EC) has set an ambitious goal: achieve close-to-zero injuries and fatalities on European roads by 2050, the so-called ‘Vision Zero‘.
SOTERIA project aims to accelerate the attainment of the EC’s ‘Vision Zero’ goal for vulnerable road users (VRUs) by providing a holistic framework of innovative tools and services. Project partners are committed to designing solutions that promote and achieve safe and green travelling of VRUs, foster integration of electric micro-mobility vehicles in urban environments and enable more inclusive transport.
At the operational level, SOTERIA will uncover little explored behaviours of VRUs and will engage Living Lab communities (targeted end-users and stakeholders) in the co-creation of urban safety solutions and road infrastructure designs. Traffic simulation models and data-driven routing applications leveraging explainable Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be developed for informing policy decisions and interconnected services that nudge VRUs towards safer behaviours in dangerous traffic situations.
The effectiveness of SOTERIA solutions will be demonstrated and validated within the Living Labs, addressing different types of VRUs, including ageing and young population groups, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists as well as two-wheeler riders. Living Labs will serve as real-world testing grounds. In SOTERIA, four Living Labs will be set up, each with a specific demonstration theme, as follows:
- Living Lab #1 – Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. Safe and inclusive integration of micro-mobility to current mobility paradigms.
- Living Lab #2 – Saxony, Germany. VRUs safety applications for generation Z.
- Living Lab #3 – Madrid, Spain. Safe and shared mobility services for improving user well-being and clean urban environments.
- Living Lab #4 – Chania/Igoumenitsa, Greece. Proactivity-based and micro-vehicle centric measures for unprotected VRUs.
“The University of Wolverhampton is in charge of the scientific and technical management of SOTERIA. We are excited with our leading role in the development of technologies and tools that will make travelling in Europe safer for all road users. Our aspiration is to achieve road safety equality for the ever-changing mobility sector where disruptive services and complex needs necessitate innovative, adaptive and user-led solutions”, explained Professor Panos Georgakis.
“As project coordinator of SOTERIA, Netcompany-Intrasoft aims to secure a thriving collaboration among our consortium during the upcoming 3.5 years. To achieve this aim, we rely on our long track record of successfully managing large and complex collaborative research projects for over 25 years, as well as effectively communicating research results within Europe and beyond”, highlighted Dr. Marina Georgiou.
SOTERIA is operating on a budget of approximately 3.3 million euros, having started on 1 November 2022. An international consortium of 16 partners from seven countries – Luxemburg, Greece, Spain, Germany, France, Belgium and the United Kingdom – have joined forces towards the co-creation of road safety solutions and infrastructure designs for VRUs. These are SOTERIA’s partners: Netcompany-Intrasoft (project coordinator), Frontier Innovations, DeustoTech, Nommon, Fraunhofer, Vianova, SWARCO, DEKRA DIGITAL, Otonomo, Cyclopolis Ltd, CORTE, ELTA Courier, University of Wolverhampton, University of the West of England, Onsee y Oxfordshire County Council.
About Nommon
Nommon is a research-intensive technology company that develops and provides decision support tools based on big data and artificial intelligence. Nommon’s purpose is to put these technologies at the service of sustainable development, helping public and private organisations that work in the fields of transport and mobility, smart cities, urban planning, tourism, retail, geomarketing, or in other sectors where geospatial data plays a relevant role. Nommon specialises in the analysis of mobility data for the planning and management of transport and traffic systems. The Company is a pioneer in Europe in the study of mobility through anonymised records from mobile phone networks. Since 2015, Nommon has completed more than 300 projects in different countries of Europe and Latin America in which mobile phone data has been used to study urban and interurban mobility.
