Urbanism Next, New Urban Mobility alliance (NUMO),  POLIS, TNO, Gemeente Rotterdam, and Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management are rescheduling the Urbanism Next Europe conference to June 10 and 11, 2021, with its pre-Conference workshop set on June 9, 2021, in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The sessions at Urbanism Next Europe will feature in-depth presentations exploring how technological, societal and economic mobility trends will change land use, urban design, transport, real estate, environment, equity,  health, economy and governance. The conference will gather 350 decision-makers and urban professionals from Europe and beyond. 

A Diploma Thesis titled “Acceptance of environmental transport charging policies” was recently presented by Asimina Korentzelou. The aim of this Diploma Thesis is to investigate drivers’ acceptance of environmental transport charging policies with emphasis on environmental charging (annual card) for private cars access in Athens center. On that purpose, data were collected through a questionnaire survey, using stated preference methodology. The results demonstrate that annual card cost and travel time savings are the main factors for the acceptance of the annual card. Furthermore, men, young people and high-income travelers are more likely to accept the annual card and environmental traffic policies. Finally, it was observed that the environmental awareness of drivers affects the acceptance of environmental traffic policies.   

CNN Greece in collaboration with INTERAMERICAN and Anytime organised an online Workshop titled “We lead Transport to modern solutions” on 22 July 2020, with the active contribution of the NTUA Road Safety Observatory. The workshop highlighted modern solutions and applications of technology in Automotive, aiming at a cleaner atmosphere and environment in cities and enhanced road safety for citizens. The discussion topics were the following: “Energy and the Car”, “Urban Sustainability”, “Technology and the Car”.      

The third Newsletter of the Horizon 2020 project BeOpen (European forum and observatory for open science in transport) was recently released highlighting the latest deliverables submitted and project activities in the next sections. It also informs about the BE OPEN contribution to UNESCO global discussion on Open Science and the project featuring in the FIRM magazine Issue 15. Finally,  the 3rd Newsletter presents the seven distinguished international experts who have agreed to be part of the BE OPEN Advisory Board.  

The 2nd Newsletter of the Horizon 2020 project i-DREAMS (Safety Tolerance zone calculation and interventions for driver-vehicle–environment interactions under challenging conditions) was recently released highlighting six new technical reports submitted in the past six months and the User Advisory Board (UAB), a counselling body throughout the project’s lifetime. It also presents the CardioID’s instrumented i-DREAMS car, equipped with a suite of monitoring technologies to be used in the project, and introduces the DSS simulator builders. Finally, the 2nd Newsletter announces the internal activities as well as the upcoming activities of the project until December 2020. 

Apostolos Ziakopoulos has successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled: Spatial Analysis of Road Safety and Traffic Behaviour using High Resolution Multi-parametric Data. This PhD thesis was carried out at the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering at the School of Civil Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens under the supervision of Prof. George Yannis, using data from OSeven Telematics.

The main objective of the present doctoral dissertation is the spatial analysis of harsh event frequencies in road segments using multi-parametric data, including (i) high resolution naturalistic driving and driver behavior data from smartphone sensors, (ii) microscopic road segment geometry and road network characteristic data from digital maps and (iii) high resolution traffic data. Spatial analyses were performed on two parallel pillars: (i) Prediction models were developed in an urban road network training area, with the intent to transfer them to a second urban road network testing area and assess their predictive performance and (ii) Causal models including road user behavior and traffic input data were calibrated in an urban arterial study area per traffic state, in order to investigate additional underlying correlations in an effort to further understand the phenomena of harsh braking and harsh acceleration frequencies. Geographically Weighted Poisson Regression (GWPR) models, Bayesian Conditional Autoregressive Prior (CAR) models and Extreme Gradient Boosting algorithms with random cross-validation (RCV XGBoost) and spatial cross-validation (SPCV XGBoost) were implemented.  

A Diploma Thesis titled “Preferences towards e-scooters in Athens” was recently presented by Vasilis Maragkoudakis. The objective of this Diploma Thesis is to investigate the preferences towards e-scooters in Athens and to identify the most important factors affecting traveler modal choices in Athens. Logistic regression models were developed (multinomial and binary), which demonstrated that the probability of choosing an e-scooter depends largely on the cost, time, comfort, attitudes, habits and the demographic characteristics of the respondents. The faster and the more economical is the trip and the more familiar is the traveler with e-scooters is, the more likely he/she is to choose them over other means of transport.   

A Diploma Thesis titled “Event identification based on driving characteristics on rural roads” was recently presented by Akrivi Varela. The aim of this Diploma Thesis is to identify events based on driving characteristics on rural roads and determine the main factors that can describe the situation before and during an event. Results showed that random forest model performs much better than the binomial logistic regression in identifying event occurrence with very few false alarms. Moreover, speed and longitudinal acceleration along with total distance driven from the beginning of the driving session, turned out to better describe the case of driving one minute prior to an event. Finally, driving during an event can be sufficiently described through speed, the deviation of the vehicle from the middle of the road as well as the time headway with the vehicle ahead.   

The PRAXI Network and the General Secretariat of Research and Technology organised the “Climate-neutral & Smart Cities” webinar within the framework of Horizon Europe, on July 7, 2020. The webinar presented the mission and enrolled in a discussion between stakeholders from academia, research and public authorities.   NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation:  Sustainable Mobility in Smart Cities

The University of Thessaly, Department of Civil Engineering, Traffic, Transportation and Logistics Laboratory (TTLog), organised the 5^th Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility (VirtualCSUM2020) on June 17-19, 2020. The theme of this year’s conference was “Advances in Mobility as a Service Systems” and its objective was the dissemination of knowledge and the exchange of good practices among researchers and practitioners in the domain of urban transportation.   NTUA contributed actively with several traffic safety papers and presentations:

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a PIN Briefing “The Impact of Covid-19 Lockdowns on Road Deaths in April 2020“. This report assesses the impacts that had on road deaths in Europe during the month of April 2020 – by which time most countries were in lockdown. Out of 25 EU countries for which data is available, 19 saw a decrease in the number of road deaths in April 2020 compared to the month of April in the previous three years. In April 2020, 910 people lost their lives in road collisions in the EU25, compared to 1.415 on average during the reference period:  505 deaths were prevented. A conclusion is that there were very substantial reductions in the number of road deaths as a result of the big drops in traffic volumes due to confinement.  

TheEU’s High Level Group for Road Safety held a discussion on road safety in the COVID era on 16 June and agreed on some conclusions setting out common principles for the forthcoming transitional period. It is highlighted the importance of obtaining and sharing timely data and the enhancement of safe active mobility. Ιt has also emphasized the need to reinstate road safety enforcement, particularly if higher volumes of cars return to the roads and to restore public confidence in public transport.  

In the framework of the European Mobility Week, it will take place the ROADPOL Safety Days (formerly known as Project EDWARD) on 16-22 September, in Mainz, Germany depending on the development of the COVID-19 situation. The aim of the ROADPOL Safety Days is to reduce the number of traffic fatalities, which is 70 per day across Europe, to zero at least in one day. Schools, road safety organizations and many others support the event with larger and smaller events but everyone else can also participate.  

According to the European Commission, compared to previous years, fewer people lost their lives on EU roads in 2019. An estimated 22.800 people died in a road crash last year, almost 7.000 fewer fatalities than in 2010 – a decrease of 23%. Compared with 2018, the number fell by 2%. Eight Member States registered their lowest fatality numbers on record in 2019: Croatia, Finland France, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg and Sweden. However, progress has slowed in most countries. For the next decade, the EU has set in the “EU road safety policy framework 2021-2030” a new 50% reduction target for deaths and, for the first time, also for serious injuries by 2030.   

In the framework of the SLAIN project (Saving Lives Assessing and Improving TEN-T Road Network Safety) which is implemented by the Road Safety Institute (RSI) ‘Panos Mylonas’ in cooperation with the International Organization EuroRAP, a risk map of the greek road network was created.  At the end of the project, the same map will be updated to include more recent data that will then be available. The risk is presented by different colors (black-red-orange-yellow-green, from the highest to the lowest level of risk).    

In the framework of the Executive MSc in Cities Laboratory (EMC Lab) of London School of Economics (LSE), a programme for urban professionals in the public, private and third sectors who want to understand and deliver change in cities, NTUA contributed actively with a presentation titled “Strategic Transport Planning in Athens“. It was highlighted the current mobility situation in Athens, the effect of COVID-19 in traffic and road safety and new mobility interventions.  

The Horizon 2020 project Levitate (Societal Level Impacts of Connected and Automated Vehicles) organised the 2nd webinar on the impacts of automation in urban transport – featuring local urban strategies on 11 June, 2020 (10:00-11:30 CET).  This webinar gave an insight into the challenges that Urban mobility is facing due to the COVID-19 crisis and into local mobility strategies for longer terms adapted to the new normal. There were presentations from LEVITATE partners: National Technical University of Athens, Transport for Greater Manchester, and an additional city representative (tbc).  The full recording of the webinar is available:  NTUA actively contributed with the following presentation:  Urban Transport Services

Within the framework of 15th International Conference Road Safety in Local Communities, UNECE organised an online Workshop on experiences of South‐East European member States in road safety management on 25 June 2020. The aim of the panel was to strengthen knowledge of representatives of the South‐East Europe member States on road safety management, evidence‐based decision making on road safety strategic goals and targets and the role of the Global Framework Plan of Action of Road Safety in development of road safety system. Exchange of the best practices on implementation of national road safety strategies/plans and institutional and legislative framework for efficient road safety management were the key topics.   NTUA actively contributed with the following presentations:  EU Strategic Action Plan on Road Safety

ETSC organised with great success the 2020 ETSC Road Safety Performance Index Award event on 17 June 2020, which this year was moved online. Participants joined via teleconference for the presentation of this year’s PIN Annual Report looking at European progress in reducing road deaths and serious injuries in 2019. Estonia, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia and Portugal have reduced road deaths the most since 2010 while road deaths in Malta, the Netherlands and the UK were higher in 2019 than in 2010. Estonia was awarded with the 2020 European Transport Safety Council Road Safety Performance Index Award.