Arval Mobility Observatory Newsroom

What is a Smart City?

You will find different definitions of the concept, various Smart City indexes, and different rankings.
From a mobility perspective, a possible definition could be the following:
Thanks to data, infrastructures, connectivity and new technology, Smart Cities want to improve their residents’ quality of life (safety, security, air quality, health are examples) in a sustainable environment, offering efficient public transports, multi modal mobility and working closely with the private sector. Of course, regulations and policies are implemented in order to accommodate these changes. In France, the city of Lyon wants to exclude diesel car by 2026. In the UK, cities will ban ICE vehicles from 2030 and hybrid from 2035. All these decisions will have an impact on mobility modes in the city centers and city dwellers will have to change their habits.

The idea of the Human Machine Interface (HMI) is as old as the Industrial Revolution. It describes how humans interact with tools, either through switches, voice commands or any other interactive means. The automobile has seen many iterations of HMI throughout the years. Today, AI assistants and near-holographic displays cohabitate with the traditional pedals, steering wheel and gear-lever that have been present since the first car.

Discover more about the barriers, the challenges and the promises related to these various interfaces in this publication.

The idea of the Human Machine Interface (HMI) is as old as the Industrial Revolution. It describes how humans interact with machines, either through switches, voice commands or any other interactive means. The automobile has seen many iterations of HMI throughout the years. Today, AI assistants and near-holographic displays cohabitate with the traditional pedals, steering wheel and gear-lever that have been present since the first car.

Discover more in our article

Data is a key component of Smart Cities; indeed data help cities to improve air quality, safety, security, sustainability and mobility amongst others.

Does the increasing diversity and volume of data available about urban systems open the possibility of  constructing a quantitative 'science of cities', with the aim of identifying and modelling essential phenomena?

That is the question we asked to Marc Barthelemy Research Director at the Institut de Physique Théorique (CEA-Saclay) and Associate member of the Centre d’Analyse et de Mathématique Sociales (EHESS, Paris), about the Science of Cities.

Hydrogen is one of the Universe's most abundant elements. It is also potentially a way to store clean, renewable energy.
Although Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology has existed since 1839, hydrogen still has not achieved widespread popularity.
That may change.

During the crisis, visible positive environmental changes have been highlighted: decrease of greenhouse gas emissions, reduced congestion, and reduction of noise pollution among others.

However, this important crisis has also had an impact on city dwellers’ behaviors and expectations: people clearly expressed their wish for healthier lifestyles, one of them being an interest in active mobility and in particular cycling.
Public actors express this important interest in a more sustainable and greener future too, at different levels: European Commission, Governments and Municipalities.

Governments in the EU and in the UK combine economic stimuli with green policies. Beyond these economic stimuli, it is also a question of infrastructures to ensure dwellers safety.

Discover more in this article.

The consensus is out: Self-driving cars are going to change the world in incredible ways.
Everyone is sure it is going to happen, but few can say 'when'. First, what is an autonomous vehicle?
What are the hurdles faced by the autonomous future?
And what about autonomous shuttles?

Discover more in this video

Today, 58% of the world’s population live in urban areas, a proportion that is forecast to increase to 70 % by 2050. This situation generates a lot of challenges such as air quality concerns, congestion, hours lost in traffic (around 163 hours per driver in Paris in 2019), time that could be  spent doing other activities…. All these concerns are increasingly emphasized after the lockdown period. 
More sustainability, a greener environment in the cities are the strong targets that all urban ecosystem strive for. Public and private actors work together in this direction. In our recent video, we have explained that Mobility as a Service could be one of the solutions.
However, would it be a question of thinking the city not in term of city planning but in term of urban life planning?  That is what the concept of the “15 minute- city” is developing. 

What does it mean?

Mobility-as-a-Service, known as “MaaS”, is the integration of various forms of transport services into a single on-demand service through the use of a single application with a single payment channel. The goal of MaaS is to connect multiple mobility modes into a seamless accessible system, driven by demand and data.

Mobility as a service: Why, How, Where?