NUME engaged in pan-Nordic consortium addressing e-mobility

Together with members of the Nordic Urban Mobility Ecosystem, the WALCC and Synocus represented Finland in a pan-Nordic consortium’s development of a project proposal for Nordic Innovation’s call for smart mobility projects.

The project, titled Nordic Connectivity (NCD), is led by NUME Anchor organization Telia and proposes to address two mission-critical urban systems: the transport system and the energy system, and the need to integrate these due to the electrification of transportation. The interface connecting these two systems is the charging of vehicles, from small scale applications such as bikes to large ones like ferries. Herein, the project aims to develop new systems and products that meet the emerging needs of connectivity and control systems putting increasing demands on power grids.

The development of electric and seamless transport systems will generate a need to use power more efficiently and steer charging towards times when power demand for other purposes is low. An increasing need to communicate with vehicles and individuals will emerge as a result of the need to plan charging and transportation and identify patterns of movement on a day-to-day basis. The development creates both challenges and new opportunities.

Svenska Dagbladet reported, on April 18th, 2020, that data from Telia Crowd Insights had revealed an increase of tens of thousands of visits as compared to two weeks earlier in the center of Stockholm, The representatives of Region Stockholm were worried that this may create a surge in the number of infections of the coronavirus. This illustrates the new role of transport data and connectivity in urban management. In NCD, these experiences will be leveraged to better understand how data and connectivity can be a catalyst for more adaptive, efficient, and action-oriented smart cities.

The NCD project will engage cities, transport authorities, mobility-related companies, and researchers to establish an architectural framework for iterative development of a platform for smarter city operations in the future. The project facilitators (IUC Syd, FKG, Synocus, iKuben, ITS-Norway, and Dansk Elbil Alliance) will, together with commercial partners, activate cities (like Lund and the municipalities of Skåne and Molde) to develop pilots and demonstrations with additional companies to enable rapid scaling up and internationalization of the results.

The NCD project’s objectives rely on the topic of creating sustainable, secure, energy-efficient and decarbonized connectivity solutions where private and public sectors cooperate and acquire knowledge from relevant research institutions. We have pinpointed the following measurable challenges:

• Developing smart connectivity systems that are scalable and transnational.
• Maintaining interoperability for smart advanced, multicarrier coverage systems for transportation vessels and assets (chargers for example) across Nordic regions.
• Monitoring and maintaining security and privacy across the eMobility connectivity chain.
• Power consumption and bandwidth from a signaling and unit detection perspective.

Synocus will lead the development and planning of demonstration projects while the WALCC will serve as the project’s communications platform. If you are interested in learning more about the NCD project, please contact Jussi Hulkkonen at jussi.hulkkonen(at)walcc.org.