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Mobility in the Urban Environment - Demand-oriented Infrastructure in the Cities of the Future

The development of an infrastructure requires many years of planning and construction alone. Its span of use would then encompass several decades. Hence, a forecast of the technical and social developments in the coming decades is indispensable for the planning of a needs-oriented infrastructure.

The infrastructure of our cities must be able to react to numerous current developments in technology and society. The project “Mobility in the Urban Environment” is closely linked to the social development of transport demands (project “Traffic and Mobility in a Changing Society”) and is engaged in the following themes:

  1. The introduction of electromobility
  2. The connection and computerization of transportation means and traffic participants, as well as the emergence of automated and autonomous driving
  3. The growing importance of commercial transport

Demand-oriented Public Charging Infrastructure

The pursued aim is to determine by 2030 a needs-oriented and efficient layout of a charging infrastructure as declared in the third report of the Nationale Plattform Elektromobilität (NPE). In order to analyze it, the development of a charging infrastructure must be considered together with the distribution of electric vehicles.

Likewise, additional revenue opportunities and the reduction of barriers during introduction are of great relevance. For this purpose, the existing models mobiTopp (a transport demand model by the IfV) and ALADIN (a market diffusion model for electric vehicles by the Fraunhofer ISI) are combined in order to integrally present a common distribution of vehicles and charging infrastructures as well as the transport demands of the users.

Effects of Automated Driving on the Urban Infrastructure

In this context, the effects of automated driving on the infrastructure and mobility behavior is investigated. Automated driving, as it is currently developed, advantageously allows for the piloted vehicles to maneuver within an existing infrastructure without requiring any changes.

Above a certain percentage of automated vehicles, however, technical potentials, such as reduced safety distances, can be utilized longitudinally and transversely in order to increase the capacity of the existing infrastructure. These aspects are examined in the project to develop decisive indicators regarding new urban designs.

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Lateral sensors on the automated research vehicle

Modeling of the Urban Economic Transport

A model of the commercial transport is developed for the case of Karlsruhe. The modeling approach is microscopic, which is analogous to the modelling of passenger transport according to the simulation model mobiTopp by the IfV. In this case, each journey and each agent involved in the commercial transport is represented individually. The advantage of this modeling is that systems that enable the intelligent control of traffic can be integrated directly into the model and can therefore be evaluated. Moreover, a consistent modeling of passenger and commercial transport is meaningful because both types of transport share the same transport networks.