Leveraging Shared Mobility Data for Urban Development and Policymaking
Summary
This research explores the use of shared mobility data in Dutch municipalities for urban development and policymaking. It focuses on the supply and demand of this data within smart cities and the challenges and opportunities faced by municipalities. Through an exploratory multiple case study design surrounding the municipalities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Eindhoven, and The Hague, this research gathers in-depth information from the stakeholders involved. Through semi-structured interviews with 4 different municipalities, 5 researchers/experts, and 4 industry representatives, this study provides a comprehensive understanding of shared mobility data sharing and its use within municipalities.
The acquired data was subjected to thematic coding analysis, which identified predetermined but also new themes. The pre-determined themes were extracted from the modified taxonomy of Susha et al., (2017), which was constructed to represent the supply and demand of data within collaborations. Furthermore, the challenges identified by Diran & van Veenstra, (2020) are taken as a basis and further tested for urban development challenges in the data regime, in this case, shared mobility.
Municipalities see the benefits of shared mobility for addressing urban issues like densification and urbanization, as they aim to reduce private vehicle ownership to free up public space and achieve sustainability goals. However, they are also afraid of ‘a second Uber’ disrupting the status quo and are seeking for regulation. Municipalities seek shared mobility data to solve short-term policy problems, but shared mobility providers indicate that they should look at the longer term. Shared mobility providers, especially car-sharing providers, perceive the data requests of municipalities often as unfounded, leading to reluctance from providers to share data. CDS-M and its corresponding program of Natuurlijk Deelmobiliteit are developing in collaboration with shared mobility providers and municipalities to address these issues and provide clarity on data demand and supply. The program aims to match shared mobility data supply and demand through the development of standardized data sharing and use cases.
Two-wheel providers are required to share data as part of their permit to operate within a city, while car-sharing providers share data voluntarily due to fewer nuisances and disruptions. This data sharing is only done after concrete municipal data demand, with clear use cases for the data. Nevertheless, municipalities are increasingly pushing towards mandatory data sharing for all mobility providers. Also, some shared mobility providers proactively share data as they see benefits in improving services and infrastructure, enabling mutual benefits.
Although municipalities seem to know the value of data, they lack the expertise and skills to deal with them. Especially, the barriers such as lack of expertise and skills, determining the value and purpose of data, legal limitation/ GDPR, and difficulties in linking, analyzing, and visualizing data are crucial for Dutch municipalities. Municipalities are too siloed in their way of thinking and operations. Also, the data supply is compromised. Privacy sensitivity remains at the core of concerns in data sharing as data is valuable and considered intellectual property requiring protection to maintain a competitive advantage. Also, there is a lack of coherence and centralization in data sharing, indicating demand for centralization and handling data sharing ethically.
As municipalities often lack the knowledge and technical capabilities to access and analyze data, they often rely on third-party platforms, such as Vianova and CROW. These platforms help integrate and visualize data, though challenges remain, especially with car-sharing data. Additionally, dependence on these parties may compromise internal knowledge retention.