For EIT Urban Mobility, living labs are instrumental for testing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating new and innovative mobility solutions. Our Living labs knowledge base platform is a collection of both living lab learning practices and management tools. While the learning practices are initiatives that can function as an inspiration for other living labs, the management tools are a collection of best practices, recommendations on how to set up and operate mobility living labs, how to upscale, allow for citizens’ engagement, and co-create with the end-use and evaluate impacts.
- Barcelona City Council, EIT Urban Mobility, Fira de Barcelona, and DGT have formed an alliance to encourage companies to develop innovative mobility projects in the Catalan capital.
- The objective is to promote and boost innovation in smart and sustainable urban mobility, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda.
- The initiative has been presented to the public through a press conference chaired by Ms. Laia Bonet, deputy major at Barcelona City Council and Mr. Pere Navarro, director of DGT, and attended by Mr. Joan Angulo Arrese, Director Corporate Marketing & Strategic Projects at Fira Barcelona and Mr. Daniel Serra, Ecosystem director at EIT Urban Mobility.
Urban Lab Mobility Barcelona will be the first Living Labs laboratory in the city of Barcelona. The initiative aims to promote and facilitate the implementation of pilot tests and innovative projects in intelligent and sustainable urban mobility to diversify the city’s economy and consolidate Barcelona as the capital of innovation in mobility in Southern Europe. Through this alliance between administrations and entities, the aim is to contribute to scaling up and giving international projection to these types of innovation projects in mobility by incorporating their presentation at the leading international fairs in the market.
Public space as a test bed
One of the main problems companies encounter when developing innovative economic activities is the lack of regulation. A fact that limits their capacity to create new technologies and services. To avoid missing out on this type of opportunity, Urban Lab Barcelona will offer several geographical areas to companies as test spaces within the city, with the aim of testing pilot projects in natural environments before they are commercialised. The test spaces will be determined according to the characteristics of each project.
Advisory services and access to data
Also aimed at the organisations involved in this initiative, dynamic and personalised advisory and technical support services will be offered by experts who will provide legal, technical and operational guidance and data and information collection thanks to Barcelona City Council’s network and sensor infrastructure. Participating companies can access real-time traffic information, municipal databases, etc.
Big Data Office
A Big Data office will be created to manage all the data collected during the pilot tests.
An initiative within the framework of the future Barcelona Urban Innovation Lab
This alliance to test the mobility of the future in Barcelona is part of the strategy to consolidate Barcelona as the innovation capital of Southern Europe, defined through the public-private platform of the Barcelona Innovation Coast (BIC). The project will also be one of the first initiatives of the Barcelona Urban Innovation Lab, managed by the municipal foundation BIT Habitat. The service will be operational throughout 2022.
EIT Urban Mobility’s knowledge of the living labs approach, leveraging the expertise of the front-runner cities and organisations that are members of our community, our experience in managing innovation projects integrating research and innovation processes in real-life communities, and our community covers the quadruple-helix of innovation, are the main contributions of our entity to the initiative.
