00 - Course introduction - SM

What makes transportation sustainable:

• Sustainable
• affordable
• safe
• Economic stability

There is a wide range of solutions:

• Public Transportation
• Non-motorised vehicles
  • Cycling
  • Walking
  • Active mobility
• Alternative fuels
• Urban planning mobility

Transportation has contributed to many problems like:

• Climate change
• Air pollution
• Traffic congestion
• Resource depletion - Non-renewable energy
• Social inequalities

Course Overview

• Provide an overview of different transport concepts and their relationships to sustainable development (6 classes)
• Encourage understanding, critical reasoning, and participation
• Promote autonomous learning and research

Debates

Different formats:

• Role play
• 2 teams
• Parliamentary??

Discussions in debate might be part of the exam

Essay tips

• Follow the structure described in the following paragraphs
• Be brief and simple use short sentences
• It's the opposite of a thriller, explain everything

Context/state of the art

This part defines the level of research on the topic. It summarises the existing research/articles on our work. We need to provide macrodata and/or general facts to focus the importance of the study.

The final work should get to a level higher than the one defined by the context.

Any research we use must be cited. There are several ways to do so:

• APA
  The citation style usually depends on the journal where we want to submit our work

The context also has to justify our analysis. Sometimes our contribution is bigger, sometimes is smaller.

There's 2 parts in the context:

• Literature review - a broad overview of existing research on the topic
• State of the art - more focused on the innovation on the topic
  They are closely related but there are some differences

Hypothesis

It's the foundation of our research. It defines what we want to prove. It should be clear, specific and researchable.

It needs to be important: needs to be able to change policies, change the way people think, improve the efficiency of a system, become a new product...

It also needs to be realistic and meet the boundaries of this class

Methodology

How to justify the hypothesis

It's the backbone of the work, the main part. Sometimes, the methodology may be the objective of the article but in this case this could be too much.

The methodology may contain data analysis using formulation from other research. But it needs to be scientifically sound.

• Use reliable sources
• Use serious references
• Be clear and structured

Discussion/conclusions

It summarises the context and the hypothesis and explain the methodology.

It shows the contribution to research and justify the results.

It should also disclose the limitations of our study and explain how/what to further research on the topic.

How to present the work

read slides: 0 - Course introduction - SM, page 16

Some past examples

• Cycling in Paris
• Sustainable aviation technologies
• Transition to a car-free city in Europe
• What Barcelona can learn from Zürich. Traffic Signal Priority
• Hyperloop
• Estimating fare evassion with socioeconomic variables
• Dynamic on-Street parking management. Barcelona’s case
• Pedestrian lane through Rovira’s tunnel
• Artificial intelligence in a context of sustainable mobility
• Ride Hailing Effect
• Accessibility to health facilities. Atlanta case
• Cargo bikes in Barcelona
• Cycling in Rio de Janeiro
• Commercial Electric Vehicles
• EVs and Hidrogen