Project name: CHANGE – Enhancing the Bike Share Economy through Innovative Services and Applications

Funding source of the project: Greek Secretariat for Research and Innovation

Title of the presentation: Development of a prototype ecosystem for enhancing bikeshare schemes: the CHANGE project

Topic of the presentation: sustainable mobility, bikeshare, system architecture

Short abstract of the presentation: CHANGE is a project that aims to shift the attitude of urban trip makers towards shared, sustainable mobility alternatives, and Bike-Sharing Systems (BSS) in particular, contributing towards replacing the ownership approach with a shareship philosophy. The project focuses on the dockless BSS of Thessaloniki, that comprises a fleet of 200 electric bicycles. A cornerstone of the project is developing and using the i-CHANGE platform, that is an integrated tool to monitor and optimize the system’s operations, using the fleet’s location data, weather data and social media. Data is also utilized towards predicting incoming demand, through machine learning and data mining techniques, such as spatial clustering, outlying trajectory discovery and social media sentiment mining. At the same time, a diverse range of actions that aim to promote and enhance the performance of the BSS are undertaken, such as incentivizing commuters and tourists with free rides, designing and deploying a two-seat bicycle for users with disabilities, a gamification system, pre-booking and improved system rebalancing and maintenance. The project’s final frontier is to explore alternative BSS business plans, such business-to-business or consumer-to-consumer alternatives, seeking to discover more sustainable, operating schemes that are beneficial to the users, operators and the whole urban ecosystem.»