Vehicle-Based Multi-Services (VeMuS) for Future Urban Mobility: Concept and Research Visions

Abstract

Rapid urbanization leads to a steady increase in urban residents, which induces increased demand for a variety of urban services: transportation, logistics, food delivery, waste collection, street cleaning, police patrolling, healthcare, etc. Meanwhile, advancements in infrastructure and technology have facilitated the use of vehicles to provide a greater range of both established and emerging services. In this study, we propose a comprehensive typology to classify these vehicle-based services based on two key dimensions: service offering (i.e., passenger mobility, goods delivery, information acquisition, and mobile servers) and service location (i.e., single location, origin-destination pairs, segments in a street network, and closed routes). Also, diverse services increasingly merge and integrate to create more efficient mobility solutions. We introduce an innovative concept called "vehicle-based multi-services" (VeMuS), in which a single vehicle simultaneously offers multiple services, such as transporting passengers, delivering food, and collecting street-view data within an urban mobility system. Based on real-world use cases, we examine the attributes of VeMuS; these include vehicularity, compatibility, and simultaneity. These attributes allow us to outline the essentials for integrating distinct vehicle-based services. Furthermore, we propose a general research framework for VeMuS from multidimensional perspectives: VeMuS strategies, design, operations, and evaluation. Each component of the framework poses practical challenges for VeMuS adoption and advancement and raises a series of important research questions for future study. Through enhanced infrastructure capabilities and advanced technologies, VeMuS, with multiple integrated vehicle-based services, has the potential to substantively contribute to the transformation to a more sustainable, efficient, and adaptable future urban mobility landscape in smart cities.

Keywords: vehicle-based multi-services, urban mobility, innovative transportation, smart cities

JEL Classification: Transportation