Fraunhofer Institute for Nondestructive Testing IZFP 
URBANIST stands for “Mobile application for sustainable transportation in the urban environment using a gamification approach and real-time life cycle analysis“.
The urban living space is strongly influenced by the movement of each person. Although most citizens are aware of sustainability and climate change, there is often a feeling that the actions of each individual do not matter. As a result, there is a lack of motivation to use environmentally friendly alternatives to the private car, particularly for private transport and short journeys within cities.
In the URBANIST project, the project consortium is pursuing the goal of sensitizing and motivating citizens for sustainable mobility in urban areas. To this end, an appealing, interactive app is being developed that is based on the project's research results and enables a real-time evaluation of routes based on the environmental impact of the possible means of transportation and the route. In addition, a gamification approach will be used to develop quests for individual users and user groups to create a further incentive for sustainable urban mobility (e.g. minimum CO2 week, pedestrian week, etc.). The project thus addresses the research topic “Liveable spaces: smart, sustainable and innovative“ within the announcement with the sub-topic “Collecting data, making data usable for the municipality“.
In order to achieve these goals, the consortium is developing dynamic life-cycle assessment models that can react to current traffic situations in the city and serve to quantify environmental influences. The models are based on the fusion and AI-based evaluation of multimodal sensor nodes that are installed in the city. The consortium attaches great importance to the fact that the application to be developed invites and motivates people to acquire knowledge about sustainable transportation in the city. To this end, pilot test phases are planned at an early stage of the project to enable an intensive dialog with future users in the city of Osnabrück.
Fraunhofer IZFP's contribution to the project focuses on research into sensor-based research platforms for the collection and local processing of traffic data.