Various projects are in progress within the SBB-Lab.
A list of the CfM's current projects and their principal investigators can be found in the Annual Report 2021 (page 12). To get in touch with any of the investigators, contact them by e-mail at firstname.lastname@unisg.ch.
Customer Acceptance / Value of Autonomous Driving
The car manufacturers and other technology companies demonstrate again and again how close they are to the realization of self-propelled vehicles. One important question that needs to be answered, however, is whether consumers are also ready for this new form of mobility. The project should provide information about the willingness and desire to use autonomous vehicles in road traffic. A readiness and needs analysis is particularly necessary in the context of the strongly developed public transport system in Switzerland. The aim of the project is to identify the benefits but also the obstacles to autonomous driving from the perspective of potential users and to derive possible target groups.
Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research (SCCER) CREST
The Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research (SCCER) CREST is one of eight national consortia for energy research founded by the Federal Commission Innosuisse in 2014. The aim of SCCER CREST is to contribute to the energy transition in Switzerland by providing detailed, evidence-based recommendations for policy-makers and firm managers on how to reduce energy demand, foster innovation, and increase the share of renewables in a cost-efficient way. Within the SCCER CREST consortium, ITEM-HSG seeks to identify and understand promising business models and collaboration/interaction models and to illuminate the factors that affect business model innovation and implementation. Moreover, ITEM-HSG's Maximilian Palmié is leading the SCCER's work package "Energy, Innovation, Management".
Partners: Universities of Basel, Geneva, Lucerne, Neuchâtel and St.Gallen, as well as Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH) Zurich and Lausanne and University of Aplied Sciences Winterthur (ZHAW)
Horizon 2020 SMARTER TOGETHER: Smart and Inclusive Solutions for a Better Life in Urban Districts
SMARTER TOGETHER is a Horizon 2020 project funded by the European Union that started in 2015. As part of one of the biggest EU Research & Innovation programs ever, SMARTER TOGETHER aims to improve the quality of life in European cities. To achieve this goal, smart and inclusive solutions are developed in urban districts. The solutions are focusing on the areas of citizen & stakeholder engagement, holistic refurbishment, data management platform & smart services, electric-renewable energy sources as well as e-mobility. Within the SMARTER TOGETHER consortium, ITEM-HSG supports the commercial exploitation of and the development of business models for co-created smart city solutions in the three lighthouse cities Munich, Lyon and Vienna. To this end, ITEM-HSG analyzes best practices and develops processes and tools for the management of smart city initiatives. Additionally, ITEM-HSG participates in the EU's Business Models and Finance Task Group, which aims at harmonizing the different smart city projects under the Horizon 2020 umbrella to promote cross-collaboration between the projects.
Partners: The project consortium consists of over 30 diverse partners from eight countries. The three lighthouse cities Munich, Lyon and Vienna are implementing the measures, monitoring the results and preparing the ground for replication in the three follower cities Santiago de Compostela, sofia and Venice. the outreach of the project is further increased through the integration of Eastern & Asian perspectives from the two observer cities Kiev and Yokohama.
NRP 77 SPICE: Scaling Smart City Projects - from Individual pilots towards a Common strategy of industry Emergence
SPICE is a project in the National Research Programme (NRP) 77 on "Digital Transformation" funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The project, which started in early 2020, seeks to support the upscaling of Smart City (SC) solutions and the formation of an SC industry in Switzerland as a means to enhance innovation, efficiency, social welfare and quality of urban life. The core hypothesis of the project is that problems for scaling of SC solutions can be tackled by an integrative multi-level approach, which brings together citizen/stakeholder, organization and system perspectives. Within the SPICE consortium, ITEM-HSG seeks to understand the factors that can foster or impede the scaling and replication of smart city business models.
Partners: University of Fribourg, ZHAW, Swiss Post, Verkehrsbetriebe Zurich, City of Winterthur, Smart City Hub Switzerland, Swiss Union of Cities and Towns, IG Smart City, and others.
Swiss Centers of Competence in Energy Research (SCCER) MOBILITY
The Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research - Efficient Technologies and Systems for Mobility (SCCER Mobility) aims at developing the knowledge and technologies essential for the transition from the current fossil fuel based transportation system to a sustainable one, featuring minimal CO2 output, primary energy demand as well as virtually zero-pollutant emissions.
Research carried out within SCCER Mobility is organized into five different Capacity Areas, focusing on battery systems, fuel cells and increasing the efficiency of internal combustion engines, minimization of vehicular energy demand, energy infrastructure for future mobility as well as the assessment of entire mobility systems.
Consumer Barometer of Renewable Energy
The Consumer Barometer of Renewable Energy provides insights into what Swiss people think about energy and climate change. The study is published annually since 2011 and is based on a representative sample of more than 1,000 respondents.
The politics of overcoming carbon lock-in: Managing decline and transition in the automotive industry
Our economies are characterized by ‘carbon lock-in’ – carbon-intensive configurations of technologies, institutions, business models and other elements that reinforce the continued use of fossil energy. Political and business efforts to overcome carbon lock-in have long focused on green innovation. Despite successes, systems at all scales (e.g., countries & firms) are still locked-in: green innovations complement (not: replace) car-bon-intensive systems, so that global fossil fuel consumption continues to rise. Advancing a new research frontier to overcome this particularly rigid type of path dependence, this project focuses on deliberate decline of established carbon-intensive systems.
A focus on deliberate decline responds to recent climate assessments stressing the urgency of bold business and government action against climate change.
E-land Horizon 2020
The continued decarbonization of the energy sector through the use of renewable energy sources provides both interesting opportunities for local energy systems and challenges for existing electricity networks. Mainland regions such as isolated villages, small cities, urban districts or rural areas oftentimes have issues with weak or non-existing grid connections. These areas are known as energy islands. The goal of the European-funded H2020 project E-LAND is to provide a synergistic solution between technological, societal and business challenges that the energy sector faces.
The main concept is the E-LAND toolbox – a modular set of methodologies and ICT tools to optimize and control multi energy islands and isolated communities. The modular toolbox can be customized to meet local requirements and expandable to incorporate new tools as new challenges arise.