Shared micro-mobility options are entering European cities, although at different rates. While the first insights about usage patterns, sustainability outcomes and equity effects start to accumulate, there is an emerging need for cities to develop a strategic view on the deployment of these new mobility options: How can shared micro mobility (SMM) options best be combined with existing transport systems to increase accessibility for all and add to sustainable transportation solutions? In this context, COCOMO aims to provide insights into: 1. How SMM are combined with existing travel modes within trips and longer term travel patterns and what implications this has for sustainability (VMT and greenhouse gas emissions); 2. How SMM interact with existing forms of travel in public space and how this impacts on the attractiveness and accessibility of these modes; 3. How travel implications of (see 1.), and access to SMM mobilities (see 2.) differ between geographical contexts and socio-economic groups, and what impacts this has on equity and inclusion. Based on these insights, COCOMO engages in co-creation with users and stakeholders in order to develop design and planning guidelines for sustainable and inclusive implementation of shared micro mobilities.

In the past four decades there has been a considerable modal shift from walking to school to going by car for primary school children in England. This has led to increased congestion and air pollution and decreased traffic safety. Meanwhile, many studies have shown the health benefits to children of active travel to school. The UK Government set a target to increase the percentage of children aged 5 to 10 that usually walk to school in England from 49% in 2014 to 55% in 2025. However, despite recent initiatives, such as the national Walk to School Outreach programme, the National Travel Survey in 2019 recorded the lowest ever percentage of primary school children walking to school at 46%. Time constraints are often cited as the main barrier to parents accompanying children in walking to school with concerns about safety deterring parents from allowing children to travel independently. This highlights that if a system of providing adult supervision for walking to school can be set up then there is good scope to increase the numbers of children walking to school. A walking school bus (WSB) involves a group of children walking to school with one or more adults and following a set route. WSBs have increased walking to school in Australia, New Zealand and the United States but the UK has not widely adopted them. Taking up WSBs in significant numbers requires a degree of organisation to establish meeting points, safe routes, adult supervisors and timetables. The proposed research will develop a planning tool to enable schools to maximise the number of children walking to school using safe routes accompanied by adults. At the heart of the tool will be an Optimisation Model that identifies walking routes to school and meeting points, while addressing multiple objectives (travel time, safety and air pollution exposure). We will develop this based on our extensive experience in developing multi-objective problem solutions for public transport scheduling and other transport and healthcare applications. The Optimisation Model will work in conjunction with a Modal Choice Model, which estimates student modal choices as input to the Optimisation Model, and with a Road Network Model, which estimates the consequences of a particular walk-to-school scenario on road network conditions. The Modal Choice Model will include a novel development recognising that decisions by parents on how their children get to school are based not only on individual considerations, such as minimising travel time, but on the opinions and choices made by other parents. This will build on the team's previous work exploring the role of social influence in travel choices. The Road Network Model will allow assessments to be made of traffic management measures that can be combined with WSBs to increase confidence in walking to school. We will design the tool so that it can be used repeatedly as circumstances change. It will be able to be used reactively for re-planning when there have been changes (e.g. children absent, new school years, etc.) or proactively to put in place 'ghost' routes/stops to attract new users where potential is identified (e.g. where there is a clustering of children or where WSBs can have maximum influence on reducing pollution near a school). Our aim is for the tool to support the work of organisations such as our Project Partner Living Streets delivering the Government's Walk to School Outreach programme. A Stakeholder Advisory Group will help steer the project. The academic team will partner with Living Streets to ensure the tool is well-grounded (for example, in terms of how parents perceive walking routes or how parents' willingness for their child to walk to school is affected by physical and social context) and is practically useful for real-world application. We will demonstrate the planning tool in Bradford where the local authority and schools have agreed to work with us in designing and applying our work.

The UK transport sector lags behind all other sectors in its achievement of energy diversification and carbon emission reductions to date, with emissions from transport essentially unchanged since the benchmark year of 1990. The Committee on Climate Change have been very critical of this failure and identified electrically-assisted scooters and bikes as part of solutions that need to be urgently accelerated. Indeed, the UK lags behind other countries in the uptake of a range of innovative light vehicles for both passenger and freight applications. Examples include electrically-assisted: bicycles, cargo bicycles, push scooters, skateboards, trikes, quadricycles, hoverboards etc. These involve some electrical assistance, as well as some energy expenditure by the user. Hence, we class these vehicles as light electric vehicles for active travel (LEVATs). They enable people to cycle, scoot, skate or otherwise travel more easily or enjoyably than conventional walking or cycling. Their power source provides the opportunity to link to a variety of digital technologies - from unlocking shared vehicles, to 'track-and-trace' systems for delivery companies, to map systems or health feedback tools for users - what ELEVAVTE refers to as 'digital' travel. Innovation at the interface of e-mobility and digital technologies plays a key role for the uptake of these novel modes, with energy, IT and transport industries as key players. Increased uptake of these vehicles has significant potential for reducing mobility-related energy demand and carbon emissions, especially when users switch from non-active modes such as cars or vans. The aim of this project is to better understand these opportunities - the technological and business options and specifications, where and who they might appeal to, what trips they could be used for, how far they could replace conventional motor vehicle trips - and some of the challenges that accompany them - such as overall energy usage, safety and regulatory issues, digital integration, physical environment design, battery standardisation and behavioural inertia. After developing typologies and technology assessments based on multiple criteria, the empirical end user research will consist of surveys (aiming for 1,200 responses), demonstration days (aiming to engage at least 300 people) and longer trials with at least 60 private individuals in 3 cities in England throughout 2020 and 2021. Quantitative surveys and in-depth interviews will be undertaken with participants before and after usage to understand changes in user perceptions and experience, triangulated with GPS tracking of the trial vehicles and contextual data (e.g. weather, hilliness). As part of the work, we will develop new safety training resources for each mode, drawing on, and adapting, existing UK initiatives and international experience and working towards certified schemes. Freight applications in the logistics industry will be analysed through expert interviews and case studies. A number of technology and demand scenarios will assess the whole lifecycle health and environmental impacts. This will include work with the World Health Organization expert group to extend the HEAT tool (which enables users without expertise in impact assessment to conduct economic assessments of the health impacts of walking or cycling) to include these types of vehicle. This project is supported by a range of partners - including the three local authorities, Sustrans and the World Health Organization - and will be guided by an advisory panel. We will also engage with a range of industry stakeholders, through the Transport Systems Catapult, Clean Growth UK and other means. We also envisage international engagement in the work, given the rapidly evolving and growing nature of the topic, and the lack of a substantial academic literature on the implications of these innovative light vehicles for energy demand, mobility and climate change.

The Urban Big Data Centre aims to promote innovative research methods and the use of big data to improve social, economic and environmental well-being in cities. Traditionally, quantitative urban analysis relied on data designed for research purposes: Census and social surveys, in particular. Their qualities are well understood and the skills needed for extracting knowledge from them widely shared by social researchers. With the arrival of the digital age, we produce an ever increasing volume of data as we go about our daily lives from physical sensors, business and public administrative systems, or social media platforms, for example. These data have the potential to provide valuable insights into urban life but there are many more challenges in extracting useful knowledge from them. Some are technical, arising from the volume and variety of data, and its less structured nature. Some are legal and ethical, concerning data ownership rights and individual privacy rights. Above all, there are important social science issues in the use of big data. We need to shape the questions we ask of these data with an informed perspective on urban problems and contexts, and not have data drive the research. There is a need to ask questions about the data themselves and how they affect the resulting representations of urban life. And there is a need to examine the ways in which these data are taken up by policy makers and used in decision making. UBDC is a research centre which brings together an outstanding multi-disciplinary team to address these complex and varied challenges. We are a unique combination of four capacities: social scientists with expertise from a range of disciplinary backgrounds relevant to urban studies; data scientists with expertise in programming, data management, information retrieval and spatial information systems, as well as in legal issues around big data use; a data infrastructure comprising a substantial data collection and secure data management and analysis systems; and an academic group with strong connections to policy, industry and civil society organisations developed over the course of phase one and wider work. In the second phase, our objectives are to maximise the social and economic benefits of activities from phase one. We will do this in particular through partnerships with industrial and government stakeholders, working together to produce analyses which meet their needs as well as having wider application. We will continue to publish world-leading scientific papers across a range of disciplines. We will work to enhance data collections and develop new methods of analysis. We will conduct research to understand the quality of these new data, how well they represent or misrepresent particular aspects of life, and how they are and could be used by policy makers in practice. Lastly, we will build capacity for researchers and others to work with this kind of data in future. Our work programme comprises four thematic work packages. One focuses on understanding the sustainability, equity and efficiency of urban transport systems and on evaluating the impacts on these of infrastructure investments. There is a particular focus on public transport accessibility as well as active travel and hence health outcomes. The second examines the changing residential structure of cities or patterns of spatial segregation, and their consequences for social equity, with a particular focus on the re-growth of private renting. The third studies how urban systems shape skills development and productivity and, in particular, how the combination of home and school environments combine to shape secondary educational attainment. The fourth explores how big data are being taken up by policy makers. It asks what the barriers are to more effective use of these data but also whether they distort the picture of needs which a public body may form.

"Poor air quality is the largest environmental risk to Public Health in the UK" [DEFRA, 2017]. Air pollution in the West Midlands affects some 2.8 million people, reducing average life expectancy by up to 6 months, and is responsible for economic costs estimated at £860m per year. Air quality is therefore a key priority for local and regional government, and increasingly the general public, with further emphasis arising from the "Diesel-gate" emissions scandal, and ongoing High Court challenges to the Government's Air Quality strategy. Historically, local air quality policy has been the responsibility of the individual Local Authorities. However, air pollution does not respect political boundaries, and the 2016 formation of the West Midlands Combined Authority will lead to an integrated approach to air pollution, under the Second Devolution Deal for the West Midlands (2017). In parallel, the NHS Sustainability Transformation Trust is bringing an integrated approach to health and social care provision - with air quality a core priority. This gives rise to a unique and timely opportunity to translate environmental science research expertise into regional policy and interventions to reduce air pollution. The University of Birmingham group has critical mass, international research expertise and NERC track record in air pollution, and its health and economic impacts. We have a history of links with regional partners, ranging from commissioned work and joint research projects to informal collaborations. Accordingly, we have developed the West Midlands Air Quality Improvement Programme (WMAQIP), through a co-design process alongside regional stakeholders including the WMCA / Mayor of the West Midlands, Local Authorities, private companies, industry sector bodies and third sector organisations, to deliver: -Situational awareness (understanding of air pollution levels and sources), e.g. applied to refinement of the Birmingham Clean Air Zone and design of future interventions in Coventry, avoiding over £5m annual costs plus benefits to visitors / commuters working in the cities. -Predictive Capability to evaluate AQ policy options, in comparison with business as usual predictions, for pollution levels, health and economic impacts - identifying interventions to achieve Birmingham City Council's goal of halving AQ-related mortality by 2030 (750 deaths/yr and £170m annual costs avoided); avoiding additional healthcare costs of £600m required under business-as-usual scenarios, and informing allocation of recurrent and one-off intra-city transport investment of £250m. -Application of the resulting capability to specific policy scenarios - including infrastructure design around the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games to deliver improved air quality, understanding the air quality consequences of future vehicle fleet evolution to electric vehicles, and optimising air quality co-benefits from green infrastructure for HS2 development. WMAQIP directly addresses the UK Industrial Strategy grand challenge of Clean Growth, which commits the Government to "create a future where our cities benefit from cleaner air", and the Infrastructure foundation of productivity, which identifies a determination to "tackle air pollution and support affected areas, given the significant negative impact it has on public health, the economy and the environment." WMAQIP combines NERC research expertise with direct inputs from a range of partner organisations. The programme will deliver policy impact from application of environmental science applied to specific policy priorities through a cohort of Impact Fellows, physically embedded within stakeholder organisations to provide knowledge transfer and training, and hence lasting impact. Programme legacy will be maximised by formalising capabilities as tools which may be applied elsewhere, and actions to promote their dissemination.