FranchetIA - AI4Cities

Using AI to analyse travel patterns

AI4Cities is a EU-funded project bringing together leading European cities looking for artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to accelerate carbon neutrality. HELSINKI (Finland), AMSTERDAM (Netherlands), COPENHAGEN (Denmark), PARIS REGION (France), STAVANGER (Norway) and TALLINN (Estonia) are the six European cities and regions that want to ask suppliers to provide with AI solutions for mobility and energy challenges, that will ultimately contribute to reduce CO2 emissions and meet their climate commitments. Using AI to analyse travel patterns to devise more efficient routes and timetables, contributing to a much lower environmental footprint. Optimising the use of electric vehicle charging and micro mobility stations locations by giving AI based recommendations. Evaluating and improving incentives performance based on AI models. Assessing and predicting the impact of adopting plant-based solutions using AI.

FranchetAI is an innovative data-driven and AI-based solution that aims at helping cities absorb traffic pollution. Inspired by the Cotoneaster franchetii, a super-plant recently acknowledged for filtering 20% more emissions (namely automobile air pollutants) than other hedges; the solution proposes monitoring and estimating the GHG emissions produced by transportation solutions within smart cities across Europe. Furthermore, it leverages AI technology to analyse and forecast behaviours based on multimodal data (e.g., electric and shared mobility usage) and provide recommendations to reduce these emissions.

The FranchetAI solution will provide cities with forecasting reports about the usage of EV chargers and micro-mobility systems for different periods, access to geographic distribution of the GHG emissions across the urban environment, their evolution over time, and their source and recommendations about locations for nature based solutions to absorb transport-emitted GHG emissions. Citizens and commuters will get recommendations for itineraries customised to user preferences to release fewer or no GHG emissions, as well as Carbon digest reports (daily, weekly, monthly) about the amount of GHG emissions saved, through gamification and incentives from community challenges sponsored by cities and local organisations.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 871914