Dr. Allister Loder

App-based mobility management for a sustainable and self-sufficient transport system.

The transportation system is a factor in the economic and social success of a nation. Technological advances in digitization and automation are already beginning to shape the transportation system, such as car sharing and autonomous driving. However, these advances do not directly solve pressing societal challenges. Coordination and regulation are needed to address these challenges and achieve the set societal goals.

This research project aims to understand the mechanisms and scenarios under which this coordination and regulation can be successful. The core element here is the assumption that smartphones enable personalized connections to be established between users, network operators and companies, e.g. for purchasing tickets or querying travel routes. Users can thus be targeted with personalized products or incentives to induce a change in behavior in the desired direction. App-based mobility management thus offers the opportunity to be more efficient, especially compared to existing, often simple instruments. Such app-based mobility management also offers the opportunity to adjust prices and incentives to create a more socially just transportation system, e.g., by pricing according to socioeconomic status.

Mechanisms and scenarios are derived based on the scientific literature and then tested in a macroscopic system dynamics model. Finally, promising scenarios are implemented in an agent-based simulation to analyze the impacts in a more sophisticated way.