DIT4TraM: a new EU-funded project to improve traffic and mobility management

DIT4TraM is an EU-funded innovation project aiming to improve transport traffic. It amounts at almost 5 million euro. To test and develop DIT4TraM knowledge and insights, the project organises six pilots in four EU countries. The expected results include gains for traffic flow, safety, and liveability.

DIT4TraM stands for Distributed Intelligence and Technology for Traffic and Mobility Management. The project runs from 1 September 2021 to 31 August 2024. The Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) is the coordinator of the project.DIT4TraM held its kickoff meeting on September 29 and 30 and on October 1, 2021, online due to the current pandemic.

Challenge and proposed solution

Our mobility ecosystem is becoming increasingly complex, especially in urban areas. DIT4TRaM’s overall objective is to develop, implement, and test a distributed control paradigm applicable at the level of traffic operations, mobility management, demand supply synchronisation and shared mobility. This paradigm aims to employ novel and often disruptive technologies to solve pressing mobility issues (congestion, liveability, sustainability, equity). It includes advanced monitoring, estimation and (machine learning) forecasting technology, and associated algorithms for a variety of novel multi-modal management and mobility concepts operating at urban / regional scales. Under this project, twenty knowledge institutions, companies and governments are investigating and testing for the first time whether the “swarm intelligence approach” is feasible for traffic and transport.

Six pilots

DIT4TraM focuses on individual travellers, connected cars, smart bicycles, and intelligent traffic control systems. It aims to get these agents to communicate and interact locally in such a way that they automatically contribute to make road traffic safer and more efficient. The outcomes are used to set-up six pilots in several cities across Europe via the DIT4TraM future Distributed Network mobility and Traffic Management (DNTM) platform. DIT4TraM will test its solutions in four pilot areas: Bordeaux (FR), Utrecht (NL), Amsterdam (NL,) Glyfada (GR), and two simulation areas: Athens (GR) for urban applications and Mediterranean highway - AP7 (ES) for interurban application.

Expected results

While technology is evolving quickly, management, information and control methods and software are seriously lacking behind. DIT4TraM will contribute to the transition towards connected and automated mobility by providing the methodological backbone needed to fully deploy the potential of technological innovations. It does so via providing relatively simple, decentralised algorithms and distributed software that optimize both individual and collective objectives such as throughput, liveability, safety, etc., while complying to important issues such as privacy and security. It is the ambition of DIT4TraM to provide solutions to capacity bottlenecks issues by setting up a holistic, distributed, and multi-scale framework.

Facts

• Funding: EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, Grant Agreement No 953783
• Budget: almost 5 million euro
• Timeline: September 2021 - September 2024
• The partners represent the following countries: the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Greece, Spain, Germany, Israel, Cyprus, and Belgium.
• Cities involved: Bordeaux, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Glyfada, Athens, Barcelona

Contacts

• Website: https://dit4tram.eu/project/
• Project Coordinator: Sascha Hoogendoorn-Lanser, TU Delft, S.Hoogendoorn-Lanser@tudelft.nl
• Communications Manager: Raffaele Vergnani, POLIS, RVergnani@polisnetwork.eu