S U M M A R Y

Summary

Consortium

Project Meetings

Consortium Activities

So… What’s coming next?

Events

Users Group

Conferences and Events

Contact

Social Networks

Partner Profile: INFOMOBILITY

Announcements and upcoming events

C O N T E N T S

Newsletter Issue nr. 3, September 2015

Since the second year of started, many activities have ben running and different achievements have taken place. At this stage of the project, the Consortium is happy to announce that the Preparation Phase has progressed as expected and Work Packages 3 and 4 delivered their main results successfully.

According to the plan, the ICT services were specified to enable the key new functionalities of the architecture and the information and data models were defined, as well as the system interfaces to get overall interoperability. But this is not only about specifications and definitions, in this second year of the project the technical partners are dealing with the challenge of implementing this

approach and both services and applications have been prepared to be later instantiated.

Each of the pilot cities – Madrid, Lisbon and Parma- have defined their deployment plan, and the relevant adaptation at each of the sites has been assessed in detail. Finally, this period has finished with the Small Scale Pilot at each of the cities, where a group of end users have tested the applications in term of usability and basic functionality. With this important milestone, the project has accomplished its half-way point and now we are all ready to start the demonstration phase and the Large Scale Pilot.

Many dissemination activities have been carried out to show how we are doing in . Come, read this newsletter and discover everything that can be done to

support mobility for disabled and elderly users.

P R E S E N T A T I O N

Welcome to the third issue of the newsletter

(asSIsted Mobility for Older aNd impaired users) is a demonstration project with three large scale pilots in Madrid, Parma and Lisbon aiming to use ICT services to promote the independent living and social participation of mobility impaired people in the context of public parking areas and multiple transport modes.

It focuses on the reduction of fraud in the pre-ICT implementation of the European Disable Badge for public parking areas and the use of specific multimodal navigation solutions for elderly and people with disabilities.

C O N S O R T I U M • ETRA Investigación y Desarrollo,

S.A. (Spain) – Project Coordinator

• IBV – Institute of Biomechanics of Valencia (Spain)

• Madrid City Council (Spain)

• Locoslab GmbH (Germany)

• CRTM – Consorcio Regional de Transportes de Madrid (Spain)

• Infomobility SpA (Italy)

• EMEL – Empresa Pública Municipal de Mobilidade e Estacionamento de Lisboa (Portugal)

Phase 1: PREPARATION

Phase 2: SMALL SCALE PILOT

Phase 3: LARGE SCALE

DEMONSTRATION

Phase 4: DEPLOYMENT

C O N S O R T I U M A C T I V I T I E S

WP3 – ICT Services Specification and Information Model

Starting the second year of the project, the high-level view for the ICT services was agreed among the members of the SIMON project in order to realize the services in the following months. Thus, the main ICT services that needed to be adapted to support the deployment and execution of the pilot applications in different cities were specified.

One of the objectives in is to ensure the interoperability between the different applications, services and systems that shall be integrated within the project. A number of heterogeneous software components related to the mobility of impaired citizens shall intensively interoperate between them, exchanging information about the city and the requests made by the users.

The technical solutions rely on the assumption that all the components involved in each interaction have a common understanding on the semantics of the information exchanged and use a common representation, what implies the adoption of a set of common information models.

P R O J E C T M E E T I N G S

5th Project Meeting - Valencia

ETRA hosted the fifth project meeting in January 27th and 28th. Its main purpose was to discuss about the main topics of the project progress, but also to prepare the Review Meeting that would take place with the European Commission two weeks later in Luxembourg.

The technical work packages presented the status of their work, mainly related to the services specifications and the Information Model, and also with the implementation of the different apps.

In this pre-review meeting, the demonstration of the small scale pilot to the EC reviewers was prepared, which was a really important milestone in the project.

Page 2

6th Project Meeting - Lisbon

SIMON Consortium came back to Lisbon to hold the sixth project meeting on the 29th and 30th of April.

One of the main objectives of this meeting was to analyze the main comments and recommendations that are part of the First Review Meeting report and to decide a list of actions to carry out in order to fulfil with all these recommendations.

An special session was dedicated to the preparation of the pilots, including the last actions to be done for the Small Scale Pilot. Finally the three cities defined in detail the first steps for the deployment and execution of the Large Scale Pilot.

7th Project Meeting - Valencia

Hosted by IBV, the SIMON Consortium met in Valencia on the 14th of July.

During the meeting the partners reviewed the work done up to date, which included the initial tests with users in Madrid, Lisbon and Parma. The results of these tests, together with heuristic assessments, were discussed and the recommendations for improving services and applications were agreed.

The main conclusions were clear: the final version of the SIMON app would be finished soon to include all the improvements detected. And on the other hand: the pilot phase is ready to start!!

Such information models need to fit with the requirements associated to the functionalities . The solution has consisted in adopting two well-known widely information models (OSM for outdoor maps and GTFS for public transport), and designing specifically tailored models for other needs (indoor maps, parking spaces, access controlled areas, users and security, logging).

Therefore, it has been ensured that WP4 can proceed with the work for integrating applications and services.

C O N S O R T I U M A C T I V I T I E S

WP4 – ICT Services and Applications

ICT services have been realized by the project in order to create the management and end-user applications. The platform encompasses four main services: provides the core identity management functions to enable the validation and verification of parking spaces. provides the functions to reserve parking spots and to determine their availability. provides the functionality to establish access to restricted areas and provides the functions to enable multi-modal navigation within the target cities. This set of services feed the mobile apps, which are now completed and ready to be used in the pilot phase: and

Page 3

The mobile application enables users to navigate through the target cities in a multi-modal fashion that is adapted to their preferences and abilities. Towards this end, it integrates navigation services, validation services and information services related to mobility in a single application that is adapted to the needs of mobility-impaired persons. In order to achieve this targeted adaptation, the application design has been created and iterated using a focus group that encompassed mobility-impaired persons.

The main functionality of is to check whether a user has been validated in the system to make use of a specific parking space or not. In case that the user has not done the validation or has no right to park in that place, the enforcement officer can notify the infraction and act according the municipality law. This operation is very important for the parking service management in order to keep control of the parking area and also to offer the citizen the best quality of service.

CONCEPTUAL DESIGN:

Principles of DESIGN FOR

ALL and

USABILITY

C O N S O R T I U M A C T I V I T I E S

WP5 – The Small Scale Pilot

As a result of the adaptation and instantiation of pre-existing or new services at each of the pilot sites, a small scale testing is essential for a preliminary assessment and to detect if the ICT services deployed are robust. Furthermore, it is also a tool to use the first prototypes of the mobile applications –both for citizen and controllers- in order to validate usability and to obtain a first feedback from users about the fulfilment of requirements as defined in the initial phase of the project.

The Consortium executed during the months of May, June and July the small scale pilot at each of the pilot sites with the collaboration of the User Group. A first prototype version of services and applications was available to be tested, and the results of these tests and the evaluation of the conclusions determined how the ICT services should be refined.

Page 4

Starting in the last week of May, in Madrid five disabled users and two controllers performed the most common tasks with the apps, including: finding routes, searching information about public transport, getting help and validate a parking space using an NFC disabled badge. This last task was tested on real settings.

The results were very positive and the users gave a strong feedback about the utility and functionalities, while remarked different improvement possibilities of the apps.

In the following weeks, tests continued in Lisbon and Parma where users replicated the same procedure and tested the different features and possibilities for the

mobile application. Similarly, controllers from both cities have also tested the mobile app in real conditions.

Once the analysis of these initial tests was completed, an assessment of the results was carefully carried out and different improvements were decided, while the

services were refined. The fine-tuning finished and a new version of the apps has been delivered, ready for the big-scale pilots in Madrid, Lisbon and Parma.

S O … W H A T ’ S C O M I N G N E X T ?

PILOT PHASE IS STARTING! During 18 months the different services and applications will be tested in Madrid, Lisbon and Parma.

Citizens (people with disabilities, elderly, relatives, caregivers, …), associations, institutions, companies and professionals (parking controllers, traffic and mobility managers,…) are invited to participate at this stage of the project, to use the SIMON mobile apps and to be actively involved in the evaluation od the system.

Get more information about the big-scale pilot that has been launched in Madrid, Lisbon and Parma. You can join the pilots here (links are in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian):

http://simon-project.eu/pilot-phase-pruebas-piloto-fase-sperimentale/

Mobile app soon at the Play Store The SIMON Mobile app is ready to start being used in the Large Scale Demonstration. It has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese and Italian (English by default) and it will be available soon for download at

By now only the Android version will be available, in the next months the iOS will also be prepared.

Be on the look-out!!

And follow us to be updated

E V E N T S

Second User Group Workshop in Parma – June 16th 2015

The Project Second User Group Workshop was organized by Infomobility S.p.A in Parma (Italy). In line with the First Workshop that took place last year in Lisbon, this workshop aimed to encourage bigger collaboration between all stakeholders in the area of mobility and accessibility of cities, and it was organized to be the launch event of the Large Scale Pilots. Attendants and participants included public authorities, policy makers, relevant citizens associations, individuals and academics. The workshop was organized within the framework of the European Project and took place at Conference Center Paganini in Via Toscana, 5/a – Parco Falcone-Borsellino (Parma), on June 16th, 2015.

Room for more than a hundred places overflowing and a succession of a dozen speakers with different backgrounds have maintained a strong pace and never boring for the duration of the conference.

The purpose of the workshop was to present the project and the objectives of the project in Parma, as well as to discuss about their expectations regarding

technology and ICT solutions for mobility impairments. Attendees had the opportunity of exchange their experiences and understand what project has already developed to offer them a mobile app for validation and navigation in their city.

The event was divided in three sections. In the first one, the project was presented by members of the Consortium: Eva Muñoz, from ETRA (Project Coordinator) explained the services and applications developed and the objective of the Large Scale Pilot; Alberto Ferreras from IBV, spoke about the communication activities and encouraged the audience to participate in the project.

In the second session, “Accessibility in urban areas”, different speakers talked about applications and technology: Paolo Ferecchi, Responsible of the Regione Emilia Romana Network; Jessica Borsi e Matteo Salini, authors of the “Hotel Accessibility Parma & Dintorno” guides; Alessio Garbi, owner of the app “Liberu di muoversi”; Cleto Carlini, Manager of Sustainable Mobility in Comune di Bolognia; Nazzaro Pagano, national president of ANMIC; Roberto Massa, Manager of It.City; and finally,Emilia Caronna, Deputy Rector of University of Parma for the coordination of initiatives for students with disabilities and disadvantaged groups.

In the final session, interesting experiences were shared with the audience, with the intervention of Norberto De Angelis, Paralympic champion, who shown a video autobiography about his life, an example of courage for all set between the United States and Africa; Angelo Catanzaro, National President of AIPS Onlus and creator of a new bike-sharing system for to disabled recently inaugurated in Turin; to finish, Benedetta Squearcia, as responsible of Operative Sports Structure in Comune di Parma.

To all of them, thank you very much for achieving that the Workshop was a real success. We hope to see you again next year, in the Final Event.

S I M O N U S E R G R O U P

Page 5

The Project counts on the support of the following organisations, which form the SIMON User Group:

AGE platform Europe (network representing over 30 million older people in Europe)

EPA (European Parking Association)

POLIS (network of European cities and regions working together to develop innovative technologies and policies for local transport)

CERMI Madrid (The Spanish Committee of Representatives of Persons with Disabilities of the Region of Madrid )

Union Democrática de Pensionistas Y Jubilados de España, UDP (Elderly Spanish Association)

ANMIC (Italian National Association of Civil Impaired and Handicapped People – Parma Region)

Università degli studi di Parma

ACAPO (Association of blind people of Portugal)

Municipality of Lisbon

C O N F E R E N C E S A N D E V E N T S

Location-based Services for Smart Cities: in CeBIT

Locoslab counted, one year more, with a great presence in CeBIT. CeBIT is a huge event that has presented the relevant topics of the IT economy, e.g. big data, cloud applications, mobile, social business, IT security and application examples from the Internet of Things.

Locoslab powered the official CODE_n App to be used at CeBIT 2015. This app showed where to find the finalists of the contest, when to attend the presentations of the conference program and how to find new interesting partners at the venue. This technology is being used to develop and adapt the mobile app. In this line, Prof. Dr. José Marrón, CEO & Founder of Locoslab, presented “Potential of Location-based Services for Smart Cities” including information about the project.

http://www.cebit.de

XV ITS Spanish Congress in Madrid (Spain)

IBV presented the project objectives, work plan and activities at XV Spanish Congress of Intelligent Transport Systems that took place on 14-16th of April in Madrid.

All the Spanish partners (IBV, ETRA, Madrid City Council and Consorcio Regional de Transportes Madrid) were also attending the conference, taking the opportunity to share information and spread the project among stakeholders and interested parties. Information about the event can be found at

http://www.itsspain.com/itsspain/index.php/evento/105

Page 6

C O N T A C T

You can stay in touch with the latest news and activities of the project visiting our website:

http://simon-project.eu/

If you are interested in the project objectives and results, we want to encourage you to join us and to subscribe to the newsletter. You will receive updated information on the progress of the project and will be invited to the project workshops via email.

Of course you will also receive the current and following versions of the electronic project newsletter.

http://simon-project.eu/subscribe-to-newsletter/

presented at TRANSED 2015

TRANSED 2015, the 14th International Conference on Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled Persons was held in Lisbon, Portugal, last 28 - 31 July 2015.

ETRA was attending the conference and participated in one session to showcase the last developments of the project as well as to explain how the demonstrations are going to take place in the different pilot cities. In this event, the last release of the mobile app was presented and a great interest about the solution was shown by the audience. For more information about the conference, you can visit

http://transed2015.com/index.html

S O C I A L N E T W O R K S

You can find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SIMONsolution Twitter: https://twitter.com/SIMONEUProject LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/SIMON-Project-8191101 All partners, stakeholders and interested institutions and public are invited to participate through these channels.

solutions presented at a training event

On 19, 20 and 21 of May the course on “ICT applications for people with intellectual disabilities” took place in Madrid, given by the IBV in AEDIS (Asociación Empresarial para la Discapacidad) headquarters. 17 professional from associations and companies participated in this training on different strategies, tools and resources to ease the daily lives of people with disabilities using ICT solutions.

One of the main problems of people with intellectual disabilities is the orientation and mobility. In this context the SIMON project was presented. SIMON LEADS application can improve mobility and location of these individuals, as well as facilitate parking of family members and caregivers who are responsible for them.

The tool was well received by the attendees, many of whom expressed their interest in participating in the pilot tests to be held in Madrid.

P A R T N E R P R O F I L E

Infomobility S.p.A. is a joint stock company created in December 2001 and owned by the Municipality of Parma. The company’s core mission is to address and manage issues related to urban mobility in an integrated and innovative way, through services and operational consulting for public administration. Over the years the company expanded its activities: Infomobility now develops and manages services and technologically advanced systems for improving sustainable mobility in the city of Parma. This includes research, planning and managing projects about traffic, sustainable mobility, logistics and mobility management.

Website: http://www.infomobility.pr.it

Page 7

Eugenia Capone holds a degree in European Languages and Literatures at University of Parma, and a Master in European Public Relations in Rome. She become journalist and she collaborated with Italian newspapers like “Il Sole 24 ore”. Since 2005 she works in Infomobility S.p.A., in marketing and European Projects Division, as expert of sustainable mobility and communication. In the past she also worked in Buongiorno S.p.a. (editorial office in Parma and in Paris), in the press office of Ducati Motor S.p.A., Bologna and in the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Buenos Aires (Argentina).

Chiara Spaggiari holds a degree in Low at the University of Parma and in 2001 she accomplished the diploma for the Master Degree in Business Communication and Marketing in Venice. She worked few years in a Advertising Agency as a Media Planner with in on-line advertising. She is working in Infomobility S.p.A. since 2005 in the marketing and European Projects Division, planning and developing communication strategy for the Sustainable Mobility, and she is involved in EU funded projects as SIMON, ECOSTARS, CARMA.

Nicola Pozza is a Civil Engineer from the University of Parma (Italy), since 2004 he works as Project Manager in Infomobility Technical management. He is currently the Parking Division Manager, involved in implementation and organization of the City of Parma Car Parks, management of street parking (13.000 “blue lines”) and city parking car, parking meters, parking permits, ticket and ZTL access control through the electronic control access system.

Sara Ombellini is graduated in Philosophy at University of Bologna (2004). She worked at “Struchel communication” advertising agency (2005) and at “Ella Studio”communication press office (2006). In the 2007 she started in Infomobility SpA as management assistant and then in the sustainable mobility marketing and communication office.

Krizia Dolores Albano holds an Degree in IT Engineering at the University of Parma. She is project manager and system analyst in IT.City SpA, the IT company of the Parma Municipality.

A N N O U N C E M E N T S A N D U P C O M I N G E V E N T S

ITS WORLD CONGRESS

We are pleased to announce that project will be presented at the 22nd ITS World Congress that will take place the next 5–9th of October in Bordeaux (France). The ITS Congress and Exhibition is the world’s largest event in intelligent transport systems and services. Under the topic “Urban Trends Driving ITS changes”, Eva Muñoz from ETRA will talk about the project objectives and activities. Find more information at

http://itsworldcongress.com/

DRT4ALL Congress

Alberto Ferreras, researcher from IBV, will present the project at the DRT4ALL congress (V International Congress of Design, Research Networks and Technology for all), that will be held in Madrid from 23rd to 25th September.

This will be a good space to show all the advances and applications developed during the first 18 months of the project. Moreover, as the congress venue is in Madrid, it will be a great opportunity to invite Madrid citizens to test the SIMON applications and services.

CIVITAS FORUM

Infomobility, the Italian partner, will be in Ljubljana at the CIVITAS Forum, to present the project, the new apps and the activities of the pilot in Parma