Abstract & Brief
Water taxis, ferries, waterborne transit systems and other similar alternative modes of transportation are often experienced stagnant, expensive and undecided part of the transportation. Finnish Maritime Cluster is presently seeking possibilities and solutions regarding, safer, reliable, profitable, efficient, sustainable solutions that ITS and modern technology may bring within. Thus, urban waterborne context may provide an excellent platform for the real-life experiments targeting for greater integrity in the future. Through the research emerged that the information of current public waterborne transit and the information of the island is well fragmented due to the various stakeholders involved of the functionality of the islands and waterborne transit. The current public waterborne transit systems can be divided into two part; System provided by the HRT (Suomenlinna Ferries) and other 25 independent traffic operators, which are not supported by the cities. (The system provided by the Suomenlinna Ferries is excluded from the scope of this research.) I was hired by Aalto University to create smart concepts for urban waterborne transit to the Capital Region of Finland.
Research Questions
This research examines the role of urban waterborne transit in the Capital Region of Finland concerning the cities of Helsinki and Espoo and answers questions:
1. How to improve the quality of waterborne transit system with the use of modern technology?
2.How ICT (Information and Communication Technology) can enhance the quality of current
waterborne transit system in the Capital Region of Finland?
waterborne transit system in the Capital Region of Finland?
Approach
This research is conducted under Cruise & Ferry Experience program and it is part of comprehensive Smart City Ferries -study. The participatory approach of this research involved identified stakeholder groups in the design process. The data was collected through 13 interviews in the Spring of 2017. The interviewees consisted from the 3 primary internal stakeholder group; representatives from 3 water bus operators, representatives from the cities of Espoo and Helsinki and the users. The qualitative data received through literature review, observation and interviews were translated into a design concept.
Outcome
As an outcome of this research is a service concept, collecting 25 independent traffic operators and their services, destination islands of Helsinki and Espoo and their information under one service. The primary objective for this service concept is to increase the reachability of archipelago through ICT by providing reliable up-to date information through one integrated platform for its users; traffic operators and the citizens and tourists. The concept was prototyped and validated in the City Planning Department of Helsinki in 2017.