Living safely with the coronavirus in town

According to a study from Deutsche Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, 60% of respondents feel uncomfortable taking public transport at the moment, preferring instead to take private transport – their car or bike – to protect themselves. Six out of ten people shop at stores less often, with a quarter of them shopping online more often. Entrance controls, waiting in line, distancing rules and compulsory masks are keeping people away. As a result of clubs and concert halls being closed, and bars and restaurants putting restrictions in place, people are flocking to public places and partying there. How can safety and community be shaped in cities under these new conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic?

To get concrete solutions off the ground for dealing with these challenges, the EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology) Urban Mobility has initiated the Urban Mobility Special: COVID-19 EIT Accelerator programme together with the accelerators Futurebox from Denmark, PoliHub from Italy, the Technion DRIVE accelerator from Israel and the UnternemerTUM innovation incubator.

The three-month program is geared toward founders who, through innovative technologies and entrepreneurial approaches, offer solutions for mobility-related customer issues. The focus is on challenges caused by COVID-19 and opportunities for cities and urban environments. This includes solutions that:

• Create liveable urban spaces and take into account social distancing and novel sanitisation.
• Close knowledge gaps about how to handle COVID-19 in public spaces and how to inform citizens, mobility workers and politicians.
• Offer mobility approaches which take into account COVID-19 safety measures and complement the current range of mobility options.
• Make use of new market opportunities in such areas as the circular economy, innovative materials, data protection and security.
• Promote effective human behaviour and thereby support the creation of economic and social resilience. This includes sensors that measure the distance between people and that sound an alarm if they get too close to each other.

Through the Accelerator programme, founders will learn to optimise their solution’s effect with regard to COVID-19-specific cases and plan out the medium- and long-term goals of their entrepreneurial development. Industry experts and experienced founders will provide them with support along the way.

The participants will benefit from the international exchange between the partners’ four locations and their collaborations, both with each other and with the global networks of EIT Urban Mobility and their partners. This includes contacts for pilot projects with responsible places and decision-makers in municipalities and public utilities. In addition, the participants will have free access to co-working spaces over the course of the three months.

The Accelerator programme is now open to applications until 9 August 2020. Applicants are welcome to indicate the partner with whom they would preferably like to participate on site. The 50 best startup companies will be invited to pitch before a jury. The programme will begin on 31 August 2020 with 23 teams. Further information about applying to the Accelerator programme can be found here.

The program is part of the EIT Crisis Response Initiative and is subsidised by the EU. Further information is available at https://eit.europa.eu/our-activities/covid-19-response/eit-crisis-response-initiative.