Completed Engineering Public Health & Healthcare

CATCH! Citizens at the City's Heart

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A smartphone app will automatically track how people actually travel—by foot, bike, car, or bus—and use that live data to suggest the best route for each individual, factoring in not just speed but also cost, weather, and personal errands. Current travel planners rely on static timetables or limited surveys. Transport authorities lack real-time, granular data on where people go and why, making it hard to plan efficient, safe, and clean transport networks. CATCH! turns every citizen into a data source, continuously feeding anonymised travel behaviour into a “living journey planner” that adapts to live conditions. If successful, the system could give transport planners a far cheaper and more complete way to survey traffic flows than traditional methods. For the public, it means frustration-free routing that understands the human behind the request—suggesting, for example, a detour to pick up groceries during the school run. The project is applied, not fundamental science: it builds a practical tool for immediate use by transport authorities and commuters, with the potential to make cities safer and cleaner by encouraging smarter travel choices.

View original technical description
The proposed development of CATCH! is designed to provide a state-of-the-art highly-scalable system to crowdsource, analyse and act upon travel-behaviour data in real time. It will provide transport professionals with granular data and analyses on how people travel, and a 'living journey planner' that automatically records travel behaviour and gives citizens frustration-free routing based on live travel conditions. We believe in personalised solutions, with a customer centric view of transport where Catch! proactively suggests the best possible route for you. Personalised because the most convenient route may not necessarily be the fastest or most cost effective. It's about understanding the human behind the routing request. What are your preferences, routines, what's the weather like or can you tick off a chore while on the school run. In a time of austerity CATCH! will give significant value uplift to transport planners by providing a more complete and cost effective method to survey and analyse traffic flows. Be they by private or public carriages, on foot, bike or vehicle. We'll turn the world into a giant lab for delivering safer, cleaner transport choices.

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Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Citizens at the citys heart (C.A.T.C.H.) On-demand mobility solution
Feasibility of enhanced open city data management platform with crowd sourcing
City Wide Smart Transport Sensor System
Digital City Exchange
Open social transport network for urban approach to carpooling

Original classification

Collaborative R&D

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.