Research question and overall aim
The research question underlying the development of the proposed methodology is as follows:
- In light of the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy (2020), adopted by the European Commission under the European Green Deal and aiming at climate-neutral urban mobility by 2050, and of the other EU policies on sustainable cities and transport, which combination of integrated actions in the field of urban mobility, consistent with the specific characteristics of local contexts (with particular reference to the Italian context), can be considered the most appropriate and economically efficient to optimise available resources in order to achieve the goal of zero emissions, zero pollution and zero transport-related fatal accidents?
This question is reflected in the overall aim of the research, namely:
- to define a step-by-step methodology capable of supporting decision-making and the sourcing and allocation of EU and national funding, by selecting and calibrating measures designed to reduce or eliminate the climate, environmental and human health impacts of urban mobility, according to a place-based approach.
Operational objective
The EU instrument guiding European cities toward the mobility objectives set out in the relevant policy framework is the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP), introduced into the Italian legal system as the Piano Urbano della Mobilità Sostenibile (PUMS) in 2017. As specified in the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport guidelines updated in 2023, the SUMP/PUMS must define indicators to be measured at the time of adoption (baseline), the target values to be achieved at full implementation after 10 years, and intermediate targets for years 2–3 and 5.
In line with this framework, and in continuity with the general objective, the UV 2030–50 project sets the following operational objective:
- to provide methodological support for decision-making and urban sustainable mobility planning, based on measurable indicators derived from available, updatable databases and from GIS-based processing codified within the proposed procedure, in order to identify scenarios consistent with EU targets and with the territorial characteristics of the urban areas considered (municipalities, urban clusters, or metropolitan areas).
Scientific objectives
The methodology adopts a qualitative-quantitative, knowledge-driven approach and combines analytical methods and evaluation tools from different disciplines, updated and applied in an integrated way. This is reflected in the following scientific objectives:
- from urban studies, to define new meaningful indicators and threshold values through a mixed-methods approach based on GIS tools, focusing on territorial and functional factors that may support or hinder sustainable mobility actions;
- from appraisal and evaluation studies, to integrate multi-criteria analysis and threshold analysis, including the concept of an economic threshold, in relation to sustainable transport transition;
- from transport studies, to combine demand and supply analysis with indicators for assessing the climate impacts of urban mobility and with early results from MaaS experiments in Italy, especially the Turin case study;
- from mathematical sciences, to test stochastic computation and simulation techniques in support of sustainable mobility planning;
- from an interdisciplinary perspective, to connect methods and languages developed separately around urban sustainability and transport, building a shared framework that integrates territorial, transport, environmental and socio-economic viewpoints;
- to combine established indicators with new ones developed in urban studies, in order to support diagnosis, scenario building, selection of measures, and long-term monitoring through a multidimensional evaluation framework.