Sustainable mobility studies

The Sustainable Mobility Lab is a portable and easy-to-install kit to assess local mobility in situ and in a non-intrusive manner. The mobility lab allows the collection of key data on active mobility, micro-mobility, mixed traffic, air quality and meteorological parameters at the scale of street, intersection, open public spaces or closed private circuits (e.g. parking lots).

The laboratory combines different data capture technologies to facilitate the calculation of indicators in line with standards such as the Sustainable Urban Mobility Indicators (SUMIs). The methodology proposed by CIRCE allows the analysis of mobility at different levels, such as:

• Diagnostic studies: collecting data on mobility, before and after the implementation of interventions, to improve data-driven design, calculate key performance indicators and assess impact. This approach also allows for improved co-creation activities with information at the local level.
• Predictive studies: rapid on-site campaigns to collect specific data to feed models and simulations at the local network scale. For example, to support the design of interventions with pedestrian microsimulation.
• Prescriptive studies: testing in real conditions of devices and technologies available in the market to identify the permanent data infrastructure needs. In this way, an early design of the data infrastructure needed for monitoring and decision making is made.

The main equipment is as follows:

• Infrared sensors for pedestrian counting in corridors, bridges or entrances.
• Radars for tracking, counting and quantifying the occupation of space by pedestrians and cyclists.
• Pneumatic tubes to characterize the use of cycling infrastructure, segregating by bicycles, scooters and cargo-bikes.
• Pneumatic tubes and radars to characterize mixed traffic in terms of vehicle fleet volume and composition, speed and direction.
• Smart cameras for multi-mode counting and tracking.
• Portable air quality station for calculating air quality index (NOx, SO2, O3 and Particulate Matter) and noise.
• Portable weather station for thermal comfort monitoring and climate change adaptation trend analysis. 

What can we do?

• Characterization of traffic on streets, intersections, traffic circles, among others, for the design of interventions.
• Quantification of the impact of rapid transformations (road closures, changes of direction, etc.) or permanent transformations with before and after campaigns.
• Data collection for transportation modeling and simulations.
• Real-world testing for the design of data collection infrastructure.
• Real-world testing for the design of digital monitoring and/or decision making tools.
• Air quality studies.
• Noise studies.
• Thermal comfort studies.