Liikennejärjestelmän teknologiapalvelujen vaikutusarvioinnit tulevaisuudessa / Research directions for future transport service assessments

A transport system, international, national or local, is a large technological system which contains messy, complex, problem-solving components. The state of the transport system is a result of the measures and actions carried out by the producers, operators and users of the system. Basically, the ultimate purpose of the transport system is to serve the needs and expectations of the end users, who in turn shape the system by their own behaviour and actions. The system is thus both socially constructed and society shaping. For a long time, different ex ante and ex post assessments have been a standard procedure for public bodies to develop the transport system. The range of different assessment methods is wide including e.g. theoretical appraisals, simulations, empirical measurements, etc. However, in all cases the question is: How well does this scheme or strategy meet the objectives which we have set? Currently, new technology brought into the transport system changes the nature of schemes, strategies or measures as well as the roles of the different actors within the system. In the ubiquitous society of the future, it is argued also the functioning of the transport system is based on different mobile, flexible and personalized ICT services. This development will have some impacts on the ways people move and work. The field of the transport policy and management expands from macro-scale infrastructural level towards the micro-scale end-user level. In this context a concept called technology service becomes a crucially important tool for understanding the dynamics between the transport system and the end-users. Technology service is a flexible and tailored combination of technologies and services which takes into consideration the travelling or transportation preferences, needs and expectations of the different transport system end users. The emergence of tailored technology services brings new challenges to decision makers, businesses, and other societal actors. Consequently, the roles of public and private parties in the transport system will intermingle in different ways, new business models and operational practices will arise.This publication presents a view to the transport system technology services in the future and even more importantly, to the assessment knowledge needed for their development and monitoring. The results are presented in a form of four Road maps, which all take the systems perspective to the transport system development. The roadmaps are based on two workshops and reflect the themes found important by the participants from Ministry of Transport and Communications Finland, Finnish Road Administration, Finnish Motor Insurances Centre, Confederation of Finnish Industries and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.The first Road map, Networking technologies, presents tools and forms of co-operation needed to bring the assessment knowledge accessible to the different actors in all stages of the different innovation processes within the transport system development. The second Road map, Real time information based interactive systems, presents technological complexes, by which the transport system end-users will have a constant access (through vehicles or mobile devices) to the real time information about the travelling/transport possibilities the system can offer. The third Road map, Service packaging, answers to the daily transportation needs of individual people and firms. Service packaging helps the transport system users to create a selection of individual technology services to assist in travelling or transportation but also in other sectors of life in which transport is included as a part of the overall service. The fourth, meta-roadmap, serves as a research umbrella under which the more detailed thematic roadmaps are presented.The above Road maps provide three different, but complementary perspectives into the development of transport system technology services. Each of the perspectives is equally important in producing well balanced and acceptable technology services: Networking technologies will create settings for the service development. Real time information based interactive systems will offer the information, produced by new technologies in a custom-built form for the end users. Service packaging will help in implementing necessary, user friendly technology services.The study revealed that there is a need to produce assessment knowledge simultaneously from various key perspectives and throughout the transport service innovation processes. Important continuous assessment themes include at least societal impact assessments, user centered design and different assessments regarding service demand and market foresight as well as business models. In the short and medium term (1 -10 years) the assessment of transport system technology services needs to be focused on the following fields: market foresight, technology assessment as well as business model assessment and evaluation of integrated data systems; societal impacts and effectiveness of technology services in a production environment where the public and private parties should work in collaboration. From the point of view of the transport system end users, essential assessment knowledge covers the analysis on user s activities and acceptance of new devices and applications as well as interface design conducted together with designersand end users. In addition, it is important to identify the legal, organisational, etc. terms relating to new technology services. In the long term (10-25 years) the interfacing possibilities, i.e. joint implementation of different interactive systems; security and privacy related issues; business models and criteria for data transmission; societal impacts as well as actor network analysis for networking services. are examples of theissues to be emphasised in the assessments.