EMILIA - Optimization of intermodal transport in rural areas

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The EMILIA project, funded by the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (mFUND initiative), addresses the challenge of creating comprehensive and time-efficient mobility services in rural areas. The focus is on developing and optimizing on-demand transport services and linking them with adapted scheduled services. These concepts are being tested and further developed in the Hof district as a pilot region. By using structural, movement, and usage data along with innovative methods such as neural networks, digital tools are being developed that realistically simulate mobility services and optimize their planning. This work draws on existing open-source agent-based transport models, simulation libraries, and WebGIS applications. The use of a digital twin enables data-based evaluation and improvement of transport systems.

Project Management  and partners:

The project is led by Hochschule Hof, University of Applied Sciences. Further partners include:

• Technische Universität München (TUM): Chair of Transportation Engineering
• Plan4Better GmbH: Developer of GOAT and expert in datadriven planning
• Fluxguide Ausstellungssysteme GmbH: Experts in visualization and interactive applications‍
• Match Rider GmbH: Provider of ridesharing solutions
• Landkreis Hof: Pilot region and associated partner

Key work areas:

Plan4Better is part of the consortium and focuses on specific work packages within the project. Our key focus areas are, in particular:‍

• ‍Deployment and enhancement of GOAT: GOAT is being extended with the capability to model on-demand transport services, which are becoming increasingly important especially in rural areas. This facilitates the planning of seamless intermodal mobility chains.
• Agent-based transport models: Plan4Better supports the research and implementation of new approaches such as agent-based transport models, which enable the simulation and optimization of on-demand transport services.
• Application demonstrator: GOAT serves as the foundation for a demonstrator that integrates existing preliminary work on GIS interfaces, routing functions, and user interfaces. This demonstrator enables transport planners to interactively plan and evaluate mobility services.
• Accessibility analyses: Creation of dynamic, spatially high-resolution accessibility analyses to optimize the integration of fixed scheduled and on-demand transport services.

Goals and results:

• Development of suitable tools for planning and optimizing mobility services oriented toward the travel times of private cars.
• Implementation of a digital twin for simulating and evaluating mobility services.
• Use of optimization tools for the continuous improvement of mobility systems and their re-evaluation through simulation.
• Promotion of sustainable mobility through resource-efficient and time-efficient mobility solutions as an alternative to private motorized transport.
  

Special aspects:

Plan4Better leads the development of the application demonstrator, contributing its expertise in the interactive computation of accessibility and geospatial data processing. By extending GOAT, the project demonstrates how open-source technologies and data-driven approaches can shape the future of transport planning.

For further information you can visit the project fact sheet.

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