PANTA RHEI

A World in Constant Motion

Mobility is a multifaceted topic with a complex past development. Ideological quarrels, almost religious wars have been fought during the past decades when talking about mobility issues: boundless mobility for free citizens or priority to humane, liveable settlements? Can mobility cost transparency start an overdue restructuring or would it bring down or complete economic system? Expansion of transport infrastructure to shrink distances or shrinking of transport infrastructure for a compact city of short distances?

How can we use today’s knowledge and techniques to shape the forward-looking mobility of tomorrow? Mobility is necessary; each human spends a certain percentage of their lifetime on mobility. When mankind became permanent residents, transport routes were built to cover our daily needs and start early trade. Today, our cities are completely dependent on mobility processes. But how far must, may, or should mobility form – or dominate – our lives?

Actually, how can mobility be defined? On the one hand of course as movement of persons or things, but on the other hand we have to raise the question whether data traffic in form of current or light impulses is also part of mobility? How do we deal with data mobility, which influences and consequences does data mobility have on “conventional” mobility in a narrower sense? Simplification of transport streams has brought much progress and growth to our planet, but it also brought along a variety of traffic problems; which problems can be caused by steadily increasing data traffic?

Mobility can also be defined by the amounts moved: There is mobility of single persons, but many single mobilites can shape mobility patterns which can cause problems due to their size, for example commuters as short-time, but regular phenomenon or migration movements as one-time, but long-ranging and effectful occurences.

REAL CORP is also going to focus on persons who are – for whatever reason – limited in their personal mobility, be it caused by their age or as a result of physical or mental limitations. These matters, together with accessibility issues (of physical and virtual realities), will be dealt with in an own theme slot.

REAL CORP 2017 deals with everything that moves im time and space. These theme fields will be covered during the conference:

• Mobility – intermodal, multimodal, on-demand – state of the art and future perspectives
• One world? Megastructures and global transport hubs
• Traffic and transport in smart cities and regions
• E-Mobility and beyond
• Mobility of an ageing population: How to deal with special mobility needs of impaired people
• Moving people – migration into cities, international migration, seasonal migration, rediscovery of the villages, ... – from local to global perspectives
• Data analysis, surveillance and monitoring from above: satellites, planes, drones
• Changing cities, changing landscapes – slow or fast changes, stable or fragile structures
• Real time mobility data and applications
• New and upcoming transport technologies