Implications of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in Urban and Rural Environments: Emerging Research and Opportunities

With the recent advancements and implementations of technology within the global community, various regions of the world have begun to transform. The idea of smart transportation and mobility is a specific field that has been implemented among countless areas around the world that are focused on intelligent and efficient environments. Despite its strong influence and potential, sustainable mobility still faces multiple demographic and environmental challenges. New perspectives, improvements, and solutions are needed in order to successfully apply efficient and sustainable transportation within populated environments. Implications of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in Urban and Rural Environments: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on recent transportation improvements and the development of mobility systems in populated regions. While highlighting topics such as human-machine interaction, alternative vehicles, and sustainable development, this publication explores competitive solutions for transport efficiency as well as its impact on citizens' quality of life. This book is ideally designed for researchers, environmentalists, civil engineers, architects, policymakers, strategists, academicians, and students seeking current research on mobility advancements in urban and rural areas across the globe.

António Amaral holds a PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering from University of Minho and a BSc in Industrial Management and Engineering from the same University. Since 2010, he lectured in several public and private higher education institutions in the fields of Industrial Management and Engineering. Member of CIICESI Center – Center for Innovation and Research in Business Sciences and Information Systems and as a collaborating member of ALGORITMI Research Center, in the IEM line - Industrial Engineering and Management. His main research interests are related with the Sustainable Mobility Design and Management as well as Logistics and Supply Chain Management. Presently, he is an Invited Adjunct Professor at ESTG of Polythecnic Institute of PORTO.

Luís Barreto holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, a Master’s degree in Informatics and a Degree in Computer and Telecommunications Engineering. He is currently an Adjunct Professor and the Director of the direction board of Business Sciences School, of the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo (Escola Superior de Ciencias Empresariais do Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo). He has been the principal investigator of different R&D projects, nowadays he is the principal investigator of the AltoMinho.SMOB R&D project, in which the main goal is to give a global and integrated response to the problematic of passenger’s transportation in the Alto-Minho, ensuring the Passengers Public Transport Service (PPTS) in its different dimensions and sustainably and inclusively. He has published several articles regarding sustainable mobility, mobility as a service, industry 4.0, networking security, wireless mobile health applications and long-life learning, published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and proceedings of international and national conferences.

Sara T. Baltazar holds a degree in Mathematics (2006) and a Ph.D. in Electronics and Computational Engineering (2016). Worked as a university Professor and a consulte until 2018. Nowadays, she is a researcher of the AltoMinho.SMOB R&D project; and collaborates with SYSTEC – Research Center for Systems &Technologies – from University of Porto, and Institute of Systems and Robotics, from University of Coimbra. Since joining the project group in 2017, her main areas of interest are: sustainable mobility practices, Mobility as a Service (MaaS), with special focus in homologous regions of Alto Minho, and modelling and definitions of the public transport in the region.

João Pedro Cruz da Silva holds a Bachelor, Master and Doctorate in Civil Engineering at the University of Coimbra in 1990, 2001 and 2012 respectively. Started his professional career as a Civil Engineer in a consulting company working mainly in Road Design and Spatial Planning. He participated and was responsible for several projects mostly in the aforementioned areas and also in Structural and Hydraulic engineering. Actually he is an Associate Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering Polytechnic of Leiria, having held the positions of Course Coordinator, Department Coordinator, Member of the Pedagogical Council and Member of the Scientific Council. In parallel with the lecturing activities he has coordinated several practical research studies on Transports and Sustainable Mobility for national and local authorities. He also developed scientific research that resulted in several papers presented/published in Scientific Journals as well as in National and International Congresses.

Luisa M. S. Gonçalves holds a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in the scientific area of Urban and Regional Planning, and Transports an MSc in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and a specialization in Mobility Management. She is a senior lecturer at Polytechnic Institute of Leiria where she was responsible for the Laboratory of GIS and Transports and was head of the Civil Engineering Department. Nowadays she is the head of Territorial Planning Division at Town Hall of Leiria. She is also a researcher member of INESCC and a visiting professor of the master´s programme in Science and GIS at the NOVAIMS-New University of Lisbon. She has been involved as a coordinator or team member in research projects, all of which related to the field of urban planning, mobility, remote sensing and GIS, currently she is the project coordinator of the UrbSecurity project- Planning Safer Cities, a European project under the Programme URBACT III. She has authored/co-authored more than 60 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and proceedings of national and international conferences.