Population growth, rural-urban migration and rapid urbanisation pose major challenges to urban and regional development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Along with the planning of urban expansions and cities, mobility and transport concepts are required for resilient development as the physical transport infrastructure spatially interlinks the various urban elements.

Especially in Ethiopia, where the motorisation rate is still very low, an intelligent configuration of the urban structure allows to establish smart concepts that direct paths and accordingly the flow of people or goods in such way that distances can be minimized. While reducing traffic, this may achieve increased mobility at the same time.

With the goal to leverage the potential of digital methods for sustainable urban mobility planning in Ethiopia, INUMO takes an interdisciplinary approach between the fields of traffic planning, computer science and urban planning in order to develop and test new methods for integrated urban mobility. The creation of an interactive scenario development method (INUMO Toolbox) will allow professionals from multiple disciplines related to urban development to efficiently generate and optimize different urban mobility concepts and discuss them by receiving immediate feedback on their sustainability and resilience.

In Module 1 (research) our international team of scientist and instructors will work on the development of a digital toolbox leading to methods of interactive scenario development for urban mobility concepts. In Module 2 (postgraduate education and training), these methods and their development process are integrated in postgraduate education of urban & traffic planners, fostering enhanced knowledge transfer from research to education. Existing paradigms in traffic planning will be reconsidered against the background of the Sub-Saharan context, providing rich opportunities for exchange and fostering mutual understanding with a view to developing solutions based on global goals (SDGs).

Project Partners:

Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany

• Chair of Computer Science in Architecture and Spatial Planning
  (Acting Professor Dr Sven Schneider)
• Chair of Computational Architecture
  (Professor Dr Reinhard König)
• Chair of Transport System Planning
  (Professor Dr Uwe Plank-Wiedenbeck)

Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development (EiABC), Addis Ababa University (AAU), Ethiopia

• Chair of Computer Aided Design and Geoinformatics
  (Professor Dr Ephrem Gebremariam)
• Chair of Transport Planning
  (Dr Berhanu Woldetensae)

Project funding:

• BMBF - Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
• DAAD - Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst