On September 20, some of the research performed as a joint effort of the Active Mode Lab and the UMO Lab was demonstrated during the TU Delft Campus kick-off event. The TU Delft Campus aims to bridge scientists, students, start-ups, companies and knowledge institutions, to facilitate the collaboration between academia and practitioners in an earlier stage.

One of the projects that were showcased at the event was the UMO (Urban Mobility Observatory) project, funded by the NWO large programme. During this project, an integrated platform will be developed, that will collect, combine and archive a multitude of mobility-related data sources (e.g., sensor data, camera data, surveys and mobile phone data). One of the strengths of the UMO platform is that it will allow researchers to combine different data sources to get a better understanding of mobility-related choices that people make.

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During the TU Delft Campus kick-off event, we showed a sneak preview of the UMO platform features. A dashboard was configured that combined visualizations of GPS data and survey responses that were collected through a mobile phone application that was installed by a group of visitors of the event. Besides that, social media analyses were performed in real-time, resulting in a live word-cloud and a sentiment chart of all Twitter tweets related to the TU Delft Campus kick-off event. Finally, the dashboard showed a live video stream from the Leeghwaterstraat (Fietsstraat on the TU Delft campus). The social media analyses, the mobile phone application and the dashboard have all been developed in the last few years, mainly as part of the ALLEGRO project, and will be officially integrated with the UMO platform.

English:
Would you like to have some cycling exercise, make a contribution to science, or simply have a nice day off? Come and participate in a large-scale cycling experiment on April 25 in Ahoy, Rotterdam! You can register here. For more information about the experiment, click here.

Nederlands:
Fiets u graag? Wilt de wetenschap en stapje verder helpen? Of gewoon een leuk dagje uit? Doe dan mee aan een grootschalig fietsexperiment op 25 april in Ahoy, Rotterdam! Aanmelden kan via deze link. Voor meer informatie over het experiment, klik hier.

 

Held on September 7, 2016.

In 2015, AMS Institute and TU Delft have started a new scientific programme to unravel pedestrian and cyclist flows in cities coined ALLEGRO. After a successful two-day starting conference organised last year, we now took the opportunity to present and discuss the plans and results so far. The participants were (among others) the municipalities of Amsterdam and Utrecht, KIM, the engineering offices Goudappel Coffeng and Royal Haskoning DHV and the universities of Eindhoven and Delft. This diverse group of both practitioners and scientists has stimulated a fruitful discussion and interesting chats after the presentations of the ALLEGRO team. The location of this workshop was AMS, the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions, an institute in which science, education, government, business partners and societal organisations are working tightly together to create solutions for complex challenges in metropolitan areas. Exactly the challenge ALLEGRO stands for.

The ALLEGRO programme deals with Active Mode Mobility from a variety of perspectives. While developing new theories and models for the behaviour of pedestrians and cyclists in cities is the core of the project, the programme aims to contribute to practice and policy as well. Almost all ALLEGRO researchers by now have started their research, and many of the projects have already resulted in very interesting and relevant results.

Presentations were given by:
Serge Hoogendoorn (chairman) – Introduction
Dorine Duives – Active Mode Urban Data Laboratory and its applications
Vincent Gong – Collecting social media data for the AM-UML and its applications
Tim van Oijen – Using apps for data collection and information provision
Florian Schneider – Empirical analysis of active mode route and activity choices
Winnie Daamen on behalf of Yufei Yuan & Bernat Goñi Ros – Modelling traffic operations
Flurin Hänseler – Modelling and estimation of pedestrian flows in train stations
Danique Ton & Lara Zomer – Theory and modelling for active mode mobility
Xiaochen Ma – Access and Egress
Ilse Galama – Design of active mode networks
Winnie Daamen on behalf of Haneen Farah – Introduction into the microscopic modelling project
Victor Knoop – Introduction into the macroscopic modelling project

The programme covered different themes, data collection and analyses, modelling, and theory formulation. After each presentation, a designated member of the audience gave feedback, consisting of both questions and suggestions for further research directions. The latter was especially helpful for the PhD students who just started, but gave all researchers an idea of the needs and desires of the practitioners. At the end of each session, feedback and discussion was initiated for the other members of the audience. Given the highly relevant research topic and the interesting results, the lively discussions continued during the breaks and during the final drinks.

All in all, we can conclude that this was a very fruitful day, with valuable information exchange between researchers and practitioners. We are looking forward to the next occasion!

Imagine you would be standing in front of the train station in Delft and you need to go to a larger supermarket, do you know the one that is most close to you, preferably in meters and minutes? Most likely you are mistaken, or your perceived distance or travel time is different from the real ones. Did you know that the direct distance to the Aldi at the Westlandseweg is shorter than to the Jumbo at Bastiaansplein? Many travel behaviour models (incorrectly) assume that people do have perfect information about the urban environment.

After several weeks of piloting, this Thursday a team of ALLEGRO and department of Transport and Planning collected surveys at the Beestenmarkt (Delft). Citizens, visitors and tourists were asked to state their perceived distance and direction between several locations within Delft.
After processing and analysing the data, the results will help us to quantify urban cognition by assessing people’s perception of space, which is different from the real environment. As part of the ERC project lead by Serge Hoogendoorn on ‘unrAveLLing active modE travellinG and tRaffic’, we hope to integrate our findings into travel models to make them a bit more (ir)rational.

Together with the AMS Institue (Advanced Metropolitan Solutions), who is co-funding the ALLEGRO project, the ALLEGRO team will represent the slow mode research area at a stand at the Innovation Expo in Amsterdam. During this Expo, the ALLEGRO team and the AMS Institute will demonstrate their methodologies to collect data and monitor crowds, related to the real-time crowd monitoring during the SAIL event in Amsterdam in the summer of 2015.