09 November 2022

SPROUT provides its city-led innovative policy response

This task was the first step in moving from a number of policy measures specific to each pilot city, towards what SPROUT calls a ‘city-led policy response’, a response that is widely applicable to European cities.

In D5.1, The transferability assessment built upon the work carried out in WP4. City-specific policies were disaggregated and bundled together by similarity to form policy measures which were assessed for transferability, along with the new mobility solutions implemented in the pilot cities. Validation guidelines based on the TIDE (Transport Innovation Deployment for Europe) transferability methodology were produced and provided to SPROUT’s second layer cities, which carried out the transferability assessment by establishing a local structure. This consisted of a process manager and a local innovation forum (LIF). The LIF included stakeholders selected according to their expertise on the new mobility solution to be assessed, and their knowledge/involvement on the respective local policies and context. The LIF’s were provided guidance in the transferability assessment process.
A series of transferability meetings were held with first- and second-layer cities to facilitate the transferability assessment process. Cities completed ‘transferability templates’ to assess and share their findings. Second layer cities were provided with information on the implementation process of the policy measures in the context of the pilot cities.

In D5.2, the major concept of the Innovation Readiness tool is to identify if a city is capable and ready in deploying or enable the deployment of mobility innovations. To capture the innovation readiness of the city, its organization structure, capability and capacity, current regulation practices, engagement practices, financial strength and investment opportunities etc. should be studied.
For the calculation of the Innovation Readiness Index, a 21-question survey has been developed and validated from the Open Innovation Community (OIC). The Innovation Readiness Index has been calculated for the SPROUT cities and it is available online for any city that wants to use it.

Website address: https://urbanpolicymodel.imet.gr/innovation-readiness.html

The next phase, D5.3, involved delivering a comprehensive city-led policy response to harness the impacts of new mobility solutions. This classified the policy responses in pillars: better understanding; better regulation and better financing. Two additional pillars were also proposed beyond the original scope: better data and better infrastructure. Weaknesses were identified in the policy responses, to enrich these elements of the policies. The policy measures were bundled based on commonalities and patterns identified to form policy packages, which were linked to specific stages of the urban policy lifecycle. By allocating the policy packages to a specific stage of the policy lifecycle, cities can identify which state of the cycle they are in and identify SPROUT city-led policy packages and policy measures to facilitate streamlined implementation of the measures in their urban mobility context.