INESC TEC promotes Intelligent Mobility in the Urban Quadrilateral

Creating conditions to develop intelligent mobility in the four municipalities of the Urban Quadrilateral. This is the endeavour involving INESC TEC and the Associação Quadrilátero Urbano – which is already in the third phase, closer to its implementation in the municipalities of Barcelos, Braga, Famalicão and Guimarães. In the future, citizens will be able to benefit from a wide range of intelligent transport services like multimodal travel planning, integrated transport ticketing, real-time public transportation information or multi-service mobility applications.

The main objective is the creation of a smart mobility ecosystem, covering a set of connected and mobility services based on data – part of which are collected in real time. In this sense, INESC TEC designed the Minho Access Point (map), a regional data integration point for mobility services, which will be the core of the information infrastructure, and one of the fundamental axes of the future Smart Mobility Centre of the Urban Quadrilateral, resorting to similar technologies nationwide.

Led by José Correia, researcher at INESC TEC Centre for Human-Centered Computing and Information Science (HumanISE), this information systems consulting project is now in phase 3, having undergone a first stage (executed in 2021) that aimed to define the map architecture – by surveying everything that existed in terms of transportation, as well as the profile of consumers. After this first step, the project moved to the second phase, which aimed to make this architecture adequately support the interoperability mechanisms between the map and the access points in the territory. Finally, the current work focuses on the development of a digital transportation data structure that can provide a cooperative service of intelligent transportation systems in real time. INESC TEC will also keep monitoring the implementation of the projects until the second quarter of 2024.

The work that has been developed by INESC TEC is part of a roadmap; also, on April 18, the council people of Barcelos (António Ribeiro), Famalicão (Sofia Fernandes) and Guimarães (Luís Gomes Alves), as well as the representatives of Ave (Nuno Ferreira) and Cávado (Tiago Ferreira) CIM participated in the initiative’s presentation session. In addition to INESC TEC, other companies and institutions involved in projects related to planning and mobility participated in the session, namely mpt, Wegoshare, Card4B and Ubiwhere – which were also able to present their solutions related to urban mobility and present the status of the ongoing work.

Covering the municipalities of Barcelos, Braga, Famalicão and Guimarães, the Urban Quadrilateral is the third most populous urban territorial aggregate at national level (about 600.000 people); the main goal is to invest in digital technologies and sustainable mobility, among other relevant dimensions.

In addition to José Correia, researchers Frederico Branco and Guilherme Artur Capela (HumanISE researchers) are also dedicated to the project’s ongoing work.

The researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC and UTAD.