Technological innovations in transport and biodiversity

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Introduction

To deal with the harmonization of two important public interests -- to improve affordable accessibility of services, work, leisure time and other activities for all citizens avia development of transport systems services and to safeguard sustainability and development of biodiversity facing the clime change challenges means to take into account all current problems, challenges and potentials, but in the same time to think prospectively, reflexing emerging technological innovations in transport and challenges for biodiversity. Technological developments in the synergy with organizational, social and behavioral innovations have the potential to radically transform the transport sector as we know it into a more energy efficient and safe, resilient and ecologically and socially sustainable system in which mobility is replaced by accessibility and (unnecessary) transport demand is reduced.

Climate change mitigation is now unquestioned and decarbonization and transformation of the transport sector is central to the concept of sustainable development reflecting the needs to lower the inevitable and existing impacts on people and ecosystems. This transformation of the whole transport sector can provide certain opportunities to improve conditions for safeguarding the biodiversity, but it requires a holistic and inclusive approach to benefit from the combination of different kinds of innovation.

Important part of innovative approaches are nature-based or nature-close solutions providing a sustainable and economically viable alternative to conventional technical approaches for the environmental (and ecological) adaptation of infrastructure. They may not only assist in coping with climate change but also help to integrate infrastructure in the natural environment and reduce its negative impacts. Still, the concepts more broadly using ecosystem services and other nature-close solutions are rather new and more development and experience is needed to obtain its full potential.

Triggered by climate change, habitat exploitation and expanding transport, but also thanks to nature-based solutions and restauration/conservation achievements, infrastructure managers will increasingly have to deal with alien and native wildlife species some of which may be of concern to infrastructure facilities or to biodiversity. To control the biological threat and simultaneously provide for desired species, cross-sector strategies for the monitoring and management of biodiversity need to be developed and adopted.

Traditional impact assessment is not sufficient to address the large scale and long term effects that accumulate from the various direct and indirect effects of infrastructure development, climate change and their repercussion on human societies. Evaluating the cumulative effects on nature and people alike requires a holistic approach but also a comprehensive monitoring system that also tracks the outcome of mitigation attempts.

Social and ecological values should be considered jointly in a holistic planning and design of transport infrastructure. To develop appropriate solutions and help people to adopt challenges and accept necessary changes in e.g., mobility behavior, we need to rely on behavioral and psychological knowledge rather than technical solutions. Mainstreaming biodiversity and social concerns in the transport sector must call on emotional, cultural and recreational values.

Most of the innovations, however, is only implementable if it is economically defendable Priorities should hence be given to increased alternative funding, redirected incentives, and new regulation and transformation metrics. Internalization of externalities of transport costs can be a key element in this approach. In addition, also demographic trends in populations affect national and global economy and must be considered when mainstreaming biodiversity in the transport sector.

Dealing with the interrelations between innovations in transport development and biodiversity three main problem areas needs to be addressed as follows:

• Innovations of transport technologies (information and communication technologies and automation, electrification, drons, etc.)

• Innovations in transport organization (care sharing, ride-healing, modal split, control and monitoring systems),

• Transport infrastructure development (roads, railways, maglevs, hyperloops lines,)

• Implications for biodiversity mainstreaming

Development and innovations in transport technologies

Innovations of transport means

The main technology developments for future sustainable mobility seems to be concentrated in 3 main domains (see as well Barceló, 2019):

• Innovations based on the use of information and communication technologies, robotization and automation,
• Vehicular and infrastructure technology,
• Energy sources and propulsion technologies.

Innovations based on the use of information and communication technologies, robotization and automation

The probably most influential and ground-breaking technological development that will reshape transportation in the near future is the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the automation of vehicles and its capabilities to obtain, analyse and learn from Big Data (Marr, 2020). AI will govern traffic flows safely and operate individual vehicles, gather vast amounts of data on environment, infrastructure, and vehicles, and share data with others even outside the transport system. AI will further interpret, learn from, and respond to the joined flow of Big Data. The amazing and truly revolutionary thing is however, that these functions do not need highly complex coding or a centralized computation service but can self-develop from machine-learning algorithms and no-code AI platforms across the Internet of Things (IoT) (Dilmegani, Cem, 2021). In addition, these functions do not need expensive new infrastructures but can be integrated into or benefit from existing transportation networks, provided that efficient and fast communication is available.

One initial requirement for the automation of vehicles are multiple sensor networks that inform the vehicles' AI about all driving parameters such as e.g., speed, distance to next vehicle ahead, proximity to objects near the vehicle, the presence of road demarcations or the detection of humans and larger wildlife next to the road (Vervoort et al., 2017). This also creates immense opportunities for AI machinebased learning. For example, the car will remember events linked to GPS positions, learn to foresee risks, and hence pre-emptively counteract, such as by reducing travel speed at times and locations where risk factors are most frequently observed. When connected to the IoT, this experience could be shared with other vehicles, and they could adopt precautionary behaviors. This data also offers opportunities to aid biodiversity monitoring for conservation.

Many of these sensors already exist in rail and road transport today and can be purchased and retrofitted as driver assistance suites in cars. The information collected by the sensors installed in the cars can be combined with the information collected by the sensors in surrounding environment and support safe control of the transport mean. The advanced technologies allow higher levels of automation up to fully autonomous vehicles.

Example can be the technologies used by Volvo, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Tesla, Polestar, providing a level 1-2 automation (Figure 1-1). While levels 3-4 automation are already in the making by some automobile makers and IT-companies and can be expected to have its break-through in the very near future, it will require a broader political and technological consensus on the regulatory frameworks and an extensive, connected, and intelligent transport system to provide for a level 5 fully autonomous vehicle fleet .

Connected and autonomous driving (C&AD) will eventually free the driver from any responsibility allowing the use of transportation time for other tasks than monitoring vehicle and traffic. The question is not whether at all but how quickly this innovations will approach (to what degree L0-L2 vehicles will be entirely replaced by L4 or L5 systems during the next 20-30 years. How swiftly this transgression can be made depends on multiple sociological, psychological and economic factors, but the faster the change the greater the benefits for the economy -- and for the environment (Sperling, 2018). Given the immense number of vehicles and the huge number of 'individual' experiences that could be shared, the benefits of "fleet learning" may appear almost instantaneously and without any central design or plan. It only requires that car manufactures are willing or obliged to share data across a common platform (Sperling, 2018). In such a cooperative intelligent transport system (C-ITS), automated vehicles communicate with other vehicles in the surrounding network to avoid collisions and congestion, with road information systems such as traffic lights or speed regulations, and with the internet at large supporting e.g., delivery schemes, personal time schedules and intermodal connections.

Combined with information provided by and distributed across social networks, these highly decentralised and complex communication networks have the potential to greatly increase traffic safety, enhance efficacy, and reduce energy consumption (Linse et al., 2015). Member States and the EU work together on a common vision of connected and automated mobility and swiftly develop and deploy the necessary regulatory frameworks .

What applies to cars and road transportation, also applies of course to trains, airplanes, and ships. On railways, connected and intelligent trains are more closely tracked by the centralised traffic control centres, allowing for overall increase in transportation by performing infrastructure and operational analysis that will occur with the increase in traffic density (IEA, 2019). Since December 2021, four autonomous trains created by Siemens and Deutsche Bahn are in service in the city of Hamburg, Germany, as part of a €60 million modernisation project for its S-Bahn urban rail system11. In France, the first fully autonomous SNCF trains are expected in traffic in 202312, while in cities like Paris, Barcelona and Copenhagen driverless subways (Metro) are already in use for years. Airplanes are already in autopilot mode during most of their operations and automation will increase (SKYbrary Aviation Safety, 2021), while fully automated and connected shipping is under development (Cassauwers, 2020; Siemens, Schnitiger Corp., 2021). This trend may not only change our way of life but entail significant benefits to biodiversity.

Vehicular and infrastructure technology

Obviously, we are aiming for cleaner vehicles that use upgraded or new infrastructures in more efficient, inter-connected and intelligent ways. While air transport, especially by unmanned aircraft systems (i.e., drones) will develop further into an integrated part of the sectors (Gupta et al., 2021), surface transportation will remain the dominant way to transport people and goods.

New type of transport infrastructure (e.g., Hyperloops) may allow for super-speed travel, but still, most of tomorrows infrastructure may not be fundamentally different from what we operate today. In other words, even in the longer run, there will most likely be roads, railways, canals, airports, and harbours, populated by cars, trains, airplanes and ships.