Developing disruptive mobility scenarios for rural areas. Participatory mobility scenario building in a Belgian village for the year 2050

Abstract

Background Historically, quantitative forecasting methods have been used in transport planning. As forecasts can be unreliable to plan for the medium- and long-term, scenario building has recently been increasingly used. However, scenario building methods often fail to take disruptions and wild cards into account, i.e., low probability but high impact events. When unaccounted for, wild card events, like the COVID-19 pandemic, lower the efficacy of scenario building in policy making, as these events may completely disturb the developed scenarios of the future. Methods In this paper, we develop and apply a creative and participatory methodology to develop visions and disrupted scenarios for rural mobility. Our research was carried out in the Belgian village of Oetingen, where inhabitants developed more resilient views of the future by creating disrupted mobility scenarios and a preferred mobility vision for their village for the year 2050 in a participatory scenario building exercise. Wild cards related to mobility were collected from mobility experts and inhabitants in three workshops. Inhabitants were engaged to define their mobility vision on a postcard that was distributed to all houses in the village as well as on a project website. Respondents were invited for a follow-up interview in which their preferred mobility vision was subjected to the wild cards, and participants described how these wild cards would change their preferred vision. As children tend to have more creative ideas, they were engaged via workshops at school. Results This process resulted in mobility scenarios for the village for the year 2050 based on the different wild cards, as well as an overall desired vision. We found that the use of wild cards did not significantly change the scenarios when compared to the vision, although it did make the interviewees step outside of their comfort zones. We also found that the citizens did not have more original and less path-dependent ideas in developing wild cards when compared to experts. Lastly, we found that children have many outside-of-the-box suggestions when it comes to the future. Although some of their ideas can be judged as impractical by today’s standards, many ideas had an indirect implication for mobility in the village and gave insights into children’s priorities, as potential future residents of the village.

Information Extraction and Data Planning of Smart City Based on Internet of Things

“…These results in that the power supply cannot be connected during the use of the terminal device, and only external batteries can be used for power supply, which makes the application of the terminal have power consumption problems. If the device consumes a lot of power, the battery needs to be replaced frequently, which seriously affects the effective performance of the IoT function and increases the workload of the relevant personnel [4].…”

Introduction of emerging mobility services in rural areas through the use of mobile network data combined with activity‐based travel demand modelling

“…[20], who found that the use of e‐bikes and personal mobility vehicles, such as e‐scooters, is not significant, probably also due to higher average age of the population, a characteristics in common to both UK and Spain. However, in the context of potential future for rural mobility, bicycles and scooters are favoured for short trips over cars in Belgium [17], when multigeneration approach is carried out. Tori et al.…”

“…DRT remains the most popular service to flex and adapt to a dispersed demand [27]; however, other mobility services might be more appropriate if the focus is shifting to a multimodal mobility rather than increasing the need for infrastructure investment. Tori et al [17] used co-creation techniques and participatory methods to interview a sample of 14 residents from a small village in Belgium for developing a vision for rural mobility. Investigating on future of mobility scenarios is a common method widely used for transitioning towards sustainable mobility in cities for Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs).…”

“…Most of the studies concentrate on analysing operational characteristics of the transit system serving towns [15], using qualitative methods such as focus group interviews [16], co‐creation methods through a foresight future exercise [17], or structured interviews [18], which allow us to engage directly with users to identify daily mobility issues and possible interventions. Limitations of this approach are linked to the sample composition, where achieving a good balance of individuals in terms of age, gender, income, car availability proves difficult.…”

“…Tori et al. [17] used co‐creation techniques and participatory methods to interview a sample of 14 residents from a small village in Belgium for developing a vision for rural mobility. Investigating on future of mobility scenarios is a common method widely used for transitioning towards sustainable mobility in cities for Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs).…”