As stated on the starting page, transitions are rooted in co-developments within and beyond system boundaries. Profound changes within a system (e.g., the urban mobility system) result from confluences of technological innovations, changing social values and preferences, innovative governance practices, and changes in the legal environment.

The SPROUT project understands urban mobility systems as ecosystems to capture all those dimensions. An ecosystem approach provides a framework to systematically identify the main factors that drive the mobility transition and innovative policy making. The factors may be located within the mobility system (e.g., the availability and accessibility of the transport system) or beyond (e.g., the ability of the population to use new mobility solutions).

An ecosystem-based approach was followed to identify and define the main elements of an urban mobility system that affect the readiness and capability of a city to deploy innovation in mobility. An ecosystem can connect data, applications, relationships, and expertise. Thus, adopting the ecosystem approach enables the user to bridge the gap between all the stakeholders, processes and systems involved in every move to connect more easily and efficiently, with greater transparency and better management reporting.

The SPROUT urban mobility ecosystem consists of the following elements:

Each of the aforementioned elements corresponds to a specific field that is important to driving urban mobility innovation. To better understand and further analyse these elements, it was necessary to downgrade them to a lower level into sub-elements. These sub-elements can be categorised based on the perspective.

The SPROUT urban policy model develops a holistic approach for capturing the innovative perspective from two different dimensions: innovation readiness and liveability, both of which will be discussed in the succeeding pages.

More information about the ecosystem approach is provided here https://urbanpolicymodel.imet.gr/elements.html

A recorded presentation about the ecosystem elements is below