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We are experiencing a new virtual mobility. The corona crisis has ushered in a powerful push toward digitalization: home office, video calls with friends and relatives, fewer business trips. These experiences shape our mobility of the future -- a contemporary mobility with more flows of data and fewer flows of traffic.
Mobility is in the midst of a digital transformation, and data is the fuel of this development. Data open up a wide range of opportunities and, when shared, enable new mobility services. The German Mobility Award addresses this trend toward digital data-exchange, data-sharing and data-refinement, pointing out how it can be used to forge innovative solutions for mobility. The focus is equally on transport of freight and passengers.

Data influences the use of mobility and has enormous potential for innovative development. The importance of data and its use in mobility is increasing constantly. In a digitized world, large amounts of data are generated and processed every day in the mobility sector, whether by individual users, companies, or in municipalities. This data can be deployed specifically to improve mobility: for example, to avoid traffic jams, reduce emissions, provide demand-based mobility services in freight transport, or even to flexibly readjust public mobility services according to new mobility needs -- so called "just-in-time" public transportation. But data is too often exchanged only in close proximity, between transport providers and customers -- a limitation that leaves much of the social potential of mobility data untapped. To fully unlock this potential, opening up the many data repositories available is crucial. Open exchange, trusting cooperation, and optimal linking are also key. Mobility platforms that provide relevant data on supply and demand in a bundled form enable more efficient, flexible, and tailored mobility for goods and people. That is why this year the German Mobility Award is focusing on innovative solutions and services based on cooperatively fed or used data or that actively contributes to opening up data silos.

To ensure that data-driven mobility can be designed to meet current and future challenges, numerous questions need to be answered, including: How can existing data sources be merged to enable more efficient and resource-conscious logistics across all modes of transport? How do AI-based applications help to flexibly adapt mobility to the needs of a changing society? Which intelligent analysis-tools will optimize intermodal travel or transport chains to serve urban and rural areas in the future? Which modern software solutions provide transport users with access to safe and demand-oriented mobility?

What significance does data sovereignty have for the digitalization of mobility? And how are data protection and data security ensured when sharing, exchanging, and refining data? In short, how can forward-looking offerings for a mobile society be developed from the abundantly generated trove of data?

The opportunities are manifold:

In freight transport, a broad database can help make precise load-forecasts, bundle transport intelligently, integrate rail and ships more closely and efficiently into supply chains, and avoid peak-time travel. Shorter delivery times, optimized routing planning, less frequent empty runs, and reduced fuel-consumption not only reduce traffic congestion, but also help to achieve climate targets.

Local public transportation, which in the future will increasingly adapt to the individual needs of travelers, is more and more dependent on the processing of real-time data from a wide variety of sources. This will enable optimally planned, intermodal mobility chains consisting of private and public transportation, as well as seamless connections between urban and rural areas. The flexible provision of on-demand as well as sharing services is also increasingly adapting to a wide variety of mobility needs through the use of intelligent software. With the help of AI, individual transport needs could be bundled in advance and thus result in viable public transport services again.

Precise environmental data, collected by a multitude of sensors in a vehicle and evaluated in real time, form the basis for increasingly sophisticated automated driving functions. Through networking with other vehicles and an increasingly intelligent infrastructure, additional data sources can be tapped that will take automated and connected driving to a new level and significantly support technological development. The innovative use of data will also make it possible to be unconventionally mobile in the future: data exchange can take the place of goods movement or travel. Last but not least, data platforms will have to be designed in such a way that they are not only interoperable, but also meet the highest security requirements of all partners involved.

With the motto “smart travel: data-driven mobility” the German Mobility Award 2021 aims to show how sharing, exchanging, and refining data from a wide variety of sources can create innovative mobility offerings in freight and passenger transport. The competition provides a stage for projects that demonstrate the opportunities of data-driven mobility and, with their success, actively contribute to Germany growth as a business location in the digital age. The 2021 winners combine the virtual and real world to create a perfect symbiosis for the mobility of tomorrow.

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