Toward a Cooperative Approach for Continuous Innovation of Mobility Information Services

Abstract

Mobility information services (MIS), associated with intelligent transport systems (ITS), are expected to provide valuable contributions toward sustainable and smart mobility. MIS inherit from ITS the characteristic of being a collaborative system of systems (SoS) where no centralized management can actually be enforced and where heterogeneous types of independent actors are involved. Therefore, innovation in MIS cannot be conceived, represented, and consequently promoted merely as a matter of advancements in specific technological fields. In this paper, we propose a sociotechnical framework for promoting continuous innovation in MIS. Focus is made on a cooperative approach, which leverages SoS principles, to foster service and product innovation in the mobility information domain on a regional scale. We describe how this approach has been put into practice by architecting an open working environment. This is a sociotechnical environment made by: 1) a cooperative network of stakeholders (e.g., regional and national public administrations, enterprises, and research bodies) and 2) an architectural framework, which is the reference technological baseline enabling the rapid configuration, deployment, and integration of different technological capabilities. The latter is also made to support demonstration and validation activities of applied research results. Finally, we discuss obtained results, as well as future research directions and exploitation activities.