Summary

Smart (inter)urban shared mobility systems refer specifically to car rental and car sharing, where innovative decision support tools enable a more profitable and sustainable performance.

Car rental is an established yet still growing sector. This business is critical for the tourism sector, due to its potential to increase the geographical scope of foreign visits and is at the same time highly impacted by tourist flows. This is a competitive market, where two main factors influence demand: fleet availability and pricing.

Car sharing is a more recent system, growing significantly in Europe and North America. Its concept, focused on urban mobility, is in itself an attempt to reduce the environmental impact of passenger transportation, representing an actual alternative to car ownership. With higher awareness regarding climate change and increasing uncertainty on fuel prices, car sharing systems are likely to receive even more attention in the next years.

Car rental and car sharing systems face similar challenges, creating synergies between their studies and the possibility of transferring lessons learned from one to the other.

This project involves researchers from INESC TEC/University of Porto (UP) and from the University of Coimbra (UC), with significant expertise in fleet management, transportation and pricing, and a strong academic background and practical experience in both mobility systems: car rental and car sharing.

The result will empower companies and public entities that manage shared mobility systems to develop better plans, resulting in significant profit increases (critical to make these systems, especially car sharing, viable) and reductions on fleet relocations and, as a result, on environmental impact.