São José dos Campos, a city located 1 hour north from São Paulo, has been awarded as the national winner in the “Intelligent Mobility Accelerator Program”, known as the “Mobility Decarbonization Challenge”, a contest proposed by the British entity Connected Places Catapult, in partnership with SAE- BRASIL, and Wayra, with the British Consulate support. The city proposal, led by INVOZ, was titled “Optimization of the Urban Mobility Ecosystem, by Integrating Modals and Adopting Digital Technologies”.
INVOZ’s leadership was supported by the city of São José dos Campos administration, and other important partners: Parque Tecnológico, Embraer X; EVE; Dassault Systèmes, UNIFESP, Parque Tecnológico, ITA, FATEC, Instituto Alpha Lumen, Decolar, and startups DEEP ESG, Speedbird, EMOOV and DOM ROCK.
“The city proposal initiative was in line with INVOZ’s vision of being recognized for its ability to identify opportunities and mobilize resources to generate social benefits”, explained Luís Pasquotto, the city team leader in this process. Pasquotto is a member of SAE-BRASIL, and the Executive Director of Entrepreneurship at INVOZ.
The proposal, the challenge
The proposal to optimize the urban mobility ecosystem was developed under the concept of integrating modes in all their complexity for the short, medium, and long term. Team members brought ideas, and the Municipal Department of Urban Mobility provided intelligence with data related to the population local travel difficulties, such as having the Via Dutra highway literally slicing the city of São José dos Campos in halves, a fact that leads people to travel more and longer by car, when compared to similar size cities. Therefore, the challenge is how to make the first smart city in Brazil minimize its mobility issues, promoting its decarbonization and prioritizing the well-being of its population.
In summary, the proposal brings a long-term vision, with a phased implementation.
Phase 1 – educational campaign in schools and for the total population, ride-hailing apps, use of drones to transport light loads.
Phase 2 – 100% electric bus fleet, integration of all modes of transport, introduction of new electrified modes, new drone routes and a decarbonized city tour.
Phase 3 – adoption of artificial intelligence to coordinate traffic; a dashboard displaying the city’s mobility daily or weekly CO2 generation to motivate the population to reduce it ; carbon credit apps for the population; incentives for the use of ethanol and, eventually developing a city virtual mockup to test the combined effect of mobility solutions before implementing them.
Obviously, the implementation of this vision will happen in a long term, largely depending on the resources available and the maturation of related technologies. It was a too wide scope to be proposed in the 1year window contest. Considering that the first step to integrate transport modes must be data integration and thinking about 2023 (when the Challenge is focused), the city team then proposed the development of the SIM Portal – Integrated Mobility System.
The SIM Portal intends to integrate various data from the micro-regions of São José dos Campos, enabling citizens to access a variety of information, such as: bus and taxi schedules and itineraries, cars by application, electric carts, CO2 generation, among others. It will also be an interactive tool for the population complaints and suggestions. In addition, the SIM Portal will also serve as a support to the public managers to design public policies and to create strategies and initiatives for the city, such as, forecasting demand and offering public services accordingly ( for example: dimensioning the public bus fleet and routes for atypical days or on stretches in works, among other needs.)
“Our proposal, in this Mobility Decarbonization Challenge, had the main objective of benefiting citizens. This achievement is expected to generate jobs and development opportunities for science and technology entities further to generate activities and business for startups. Overall, the ultimate goal of all these initiatives is the São José dos Campos population benefit, with faster, more predictable and productive mobility, more quality of life and accidents reduction, among other improvements. We are happy to have won the National Challenge and earned the investments to put the project into practice”, emphasized Luís Pasquotto, from INVOZ.
The Intellligent Mobilitty Accelerator Program – Process Steps
The program went through a few steps. The first one was pre-selection, only 13 cities in the country were chosen to proceed. These cities were summoned to present an online 10 min Pitch, on October 28, 2022, when São José dos Campos ranked as first and advanced to the final stage with five other cities.
On November 26th, another, and now face-to-face Pitch, was held at the 29th International Mobility Technology Congress and Exhibition closure, promoted by SAE Brasil, at the Bienal pavilion, at Ibirapuera Park, in São Paulo. São José dos Campos won again. There were present at this step, Luís Pasquotto (leader and presenter of the project), Emílio Kazunoli, Col. Ricardo Roquetti, both from INVOZ, and Píer Paulo Cortopassi, CEO of startup Emoov. The mayor of São José dos Campos, Anderson Farias; professor Antônio Chaves, from Unifesp; Luiz Carvalho, from the Technological Park of São José dos Campos, and André Almeida, from the startup Dom Rock, participated on line..
The final announcement of the top 3 ranked cities came on December 2nd, and São José dos Campos/SP was the winner. Sorocaba/SP and Belo Horizonte/MG were second and third, respectively.
These 3 cities shall now receive funds earmarked for their proposals, in addition to mentoring from Catapult, Wayra and SAE-BRASIL. These coordinating entities will bring British experts and will select local and Britain startups and science and technology institutions (ICT’s) to refine the proposals and develop their solutions. These entities are also committed to negotiating the availability of funds with entities such as Embrapii, the British government and large companies with an interest in the decarbonization of urban mobility.
