NRW Fortschrittskolleg (ACCESS!)
The design of future-oriented mobility systems is a long-term and complex task that has far-reaching social implications. Therefore, it will be addressed by the ISB in cooperation with various partners as well as eleven chairs of the RWTH Aachen under the patronage of the chair for Operations Management in the next three years. In the course of the Fortschrittskolleg ACCESS!, the integration of future technological and infrastructural options (“Which kind of mobility are we able to afford?”) as well as the integration of individual mobility needs of demanders and providers (“Which kind of mobility do we want to afford?”) with social (minimum) requirements (“Which kind of mobility do we have to afford?”) and global, national and local environmental objectives (“Which kind of mobility are we allowed to afford?”) takes place. With the help of two practice projects the challenges in cities (MetropoleRuhr) and in rural areas (Kreis Heinsberg) are accounted for. Thereby, concrete recommendations to society, politics, economy and citizens can be derived to answer the question: “Which kind of mobility are we going to afford in the future?”
The Fortschrittskolleg trains disciplinary excellent and simultaneously inter- and transdisciplinary oriented executives of the mobility sector, who can comprehend the complexity of the outlined questions and handle conflicting goals, uncertainties and structural breaks, interdependencies between subsystems and interactions between actors and stakeholders.
The expertise of the chairs of Aerospace Systems, Technology of Fuels, Cultural and Economic Geography, Urban and Transport Planning, Environmental Biology and Chemodynamics, Controlling, Operations Management, Occupational and Social Medicine, Psychology as well as Gender- and Diversity Studies are brought together and combined.
The complex task and ambitious objective require a broad-scale design of the Fortschrittskolleg while also being sufficiently focused.
Outstanding aspects of the project are the following:
- Disciplinary depths due to the involvement of institutes of the RWTH Aachen with expertise in mobility research,
- Interdisciplinary orientation by integrating social sciences, economics, natural sciences, engineering as well as medicine and anchoring in the profile sector “Mobility and Transport Engineering” of the RWTH Aachen,
- Transdisciplinarity through involvement and participation of relevant social stakeholders and associations (DPWV, ADFC, BUND, BAUM, EUGT, BioSC, Initiative Zukunftsmobilität), municipal decision-makers (Kreis Heinsberg, MetropoleRuhr), transport associations (AVV, VRR, RVR) and mobility providers (moovel GmbH, Ford Forschungszentrum, momatec) and
- Everyday life problems and orientation towards implementation through transdisciplinary processing of the practical projects „MetropoleRuhr“ (urban area) and “Kreis Heinsberg” (rural area).