For more than half a year, the Interreg project BATS has been underway at the Department of Business Administration in TalTech, with the main goal of increasing the year-round active mobility (YRAM) of people on foot or on bicycles, especially in darker and/or severe weather conditions. The acronym for BATS derives from the English name of the project – Baltic Sea region Active mobiliTy Solutions.
In the first year of the project, pilot versions of tools for urban planners will be completed, which will contribute to enhancing active mobility. These digital tools help to plan both technical changes in urban space and provide strategies to change people's mobility behaviors and corresponding ways of thinking.
The completion of the technical tool is led by Aalto University, and the strategies for informing and involving residents are created by Tallinn University of Technology. In order to achieve the best results and to ensure the effective cross-use of tools, we work closely with Aalto University. In addition to regular online meetings, the researchers of Aalto University visited us for a discussion at the beginning of April, and now on May 21, we, in turn, visited them. At the last meeting at Aalto University, we discussed the possible technical solutions of the tools, the involvement of partners to create effective strategies and user group assessment by creating personas. The methodology of personas allows to describe the target user group character and needs in a data-driven way and implement targeted campaigns based on that.
We will meet with the researchers of Aalto University, as well as other BATS partners, again already at the beginning of October, when the next partner meeting of the BATS project will take place in Estonia.
The EU Baltic Sea Region Interreg project BATS runs for a total of three years and involves partners from seven Baltic Sea countries. From TalTech, Wolfgang Dieter Gerstlberger, Liis Ojamäe, Marina Järvis, Mike Franz Wahl, Jaana Merisaar and Tarmo Tuisk are participating in the project.
