Current Projects:
Act Now. Active Mobility Alliance (ActNow)
In addition to taking into account ecological and economic aspects of sustainable, active mobility, the health effects of actively travelling to work for employees in companies form the core of ActNow. Building on the GISMO project and other research results from MdZ, ActNow aims to demonstrate the full potential of active mobility in the context of commuting to work and the associated everyday routes, in particular those that accompany children, and to realise this in the test area of Salzburg and Upper Austria as well as in individual large companies throughout Austria. The application of evidence-based planning methods and planning tools is another integrative component of the project. An intersectoral policy board will accompany the ActNow project.
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Toolbox for companies - methods and tools for mobility management in the company setting
The focus of the project is on the development of a toolbox of methods and measures for companies for corporate mobility management (BMM) with a link to corporate health promotion (BGF). The basis and contents for this are derived from the methods and measures developed by the FGÖ in the project call "Active mobility - healthy on the road! Walking, cycling, scootering & co in everyday life" and the brochure "Active mobility - healthy on the road! Examples from practice for companies". The scientific claim is to make a generally valid categorisation and to incorporate the evaluation results from the previous project FAMOS.
Evaluation of the barrier-free rollability of paved surfaces in the city of Salzburg (BeroSa)
While paved surfaces have advantages over asphalt or concrete surfaces from the perspective of infiltration and monument protection, they are viewed critically or rejected by stakeholders from the perspective of barrier-free rollability. In order to find solutions for this conflict of interest, a method for measuring and evaluating the barrier-free rollability of paved surfaces was developed at the Institute of Transportation at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna (Aigner, 2020; Batiajew, Hartwig and Pfaffenbichler, 2022). Here, the surface to be tested is traversed five times in each of two directions over a length of 5-10 meters using a standard wheelchair equipped with a smartphone to measure accelerations. During the travels, one person sits in the wheelchair while a second person pushes it at a constant speed. The accelerations are recorded using the Phyophox app from ETH Zurich. The measurement data is processed with Python scripts and analyzed using various statistical methods. As part of an extensive study in Vienna, the limit value of the mean vertical acceleration for barrier-free rollability was determined to be 2.5 m/s². Surfaces with a mean vertical acceleration above this value cannot be classified as barrier-free rollable.
The proposed procedure includes the following contents and steps:
1. preparation of the test setup
2. driving on 4 test locations in the old town of Salzburg, which are to be determined by the client, with the standard wheelchair of the Institute of Transportation equipped for measurement by two employees of the Institute of Transportation (the measurements are carried out as described above without an additional driving on by test persons, who are dependent on a wheelchair)
3. summary of the results in tabular form, including photo and video documentation
4. summary of results and conclusions in a final report
Sustainable mobility behaviour from niche to norm - Transport (NTN-Verkehr)
The NTN project addresses the question of how sustainable mobility behaviour - walking, cycling and the use of public transport - can be established as the norm in everyday practice. NTN promotes the understanding of existing mobility practices, explores possible transformation paths from niche to norm and uses these findings in a co-design process with politics, administration, interest groups and citizens. Three Lower Austrian cities - Korneuburg, Stockerau and Fischamend - are used as case studies. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods will be used to investigate how sustainable mobility behaviour can be initiated and controlled. In accordance with the Lower Austrian Mobility Concept 2030, the aim is to promote sustainable mobility in the cities and to achieve a shift in the modal split from private motorised transport to environmental transport in the medium term.
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Increasing Active Mobility, including walking, cycling and use of public transport, results in environmental, economic and social benefits. What’s more, health benefits arise from the boost of physical activity through walking and cycling as a daily routine without any sports ambitions.
The Austrian Health Fund (FGOE) has determined “Active Moblity” as a priority to be funded in the project call “Active Mobility – Healthy Travelling 2019-2022” for the settings school, company and municipality. The objectives of this current project are the guidance, support and implementation of this call. The research focus is on the evaluation of measures and projects to promote Active Mobility within the three settings. Which kinds of measures result in a long-term behaviour change (in terms of switching from car use to walking or cycling) and which indicators describe these effects best? Factors of success for an efficient implementation and supportive framework conditions should be figured out to guarantee a sustainable establishment of promising Active Mobility measures. An evaluation concept is worked out to gather learning experiences and share them among the research community as well as among the three settings.
TRA:WELL - Transport & Wellbeing (TRA:WELL)
A high percentage of children around the world currently do not reach the WHO recommended level of physical activity, which is essential for children's physical and mental health and cognitive development. They increasingly spend their leisure time indoors instead of moving independently outdoors. The dominance of motorised traffic, the lack of child-friendly infrastructure and the lack of open spaces reinforce the effect of domestication. This is reflected in a decline in active mobility on school and leisure trips. Reversing these trends requires deeper insights into mechanisms of behaviour change, perceptions of the built environment, mobility-related decisions and the impact on children's well-being.
The TRA:WELL project investigates how active and independent mobility is related to children's well-being. In doing so, the subjective perception of the built environment is analysed and a child-centred perspective is used to work out how urban environments can promote child-friendly mobility. The study takes into account the overall physical activity behaviour of children and shows how active forms of mobility contribute to the fulfilment of physical activity recommendations. At the interface of quantitative and qualitative methods, students develop a child-friendly method to describe the complexity of mobility-related decisions.
The project results shed light on important arguments in the context of child-friendly mobility for parents and decision-makers and provide in-depth insight into the child's perspective. From a scientific perspective, valuable data and methods are generated. Through its transdisciplinary approach, the project makes an important contribution to the intersectoral cooperation of transport/mobility and health.