Public Funding for You. Smart. Thing. Limited

**Aim** EventGo will demonstrate a first-of-a-kind solution for accurately predicting how large visitor events impact demand for specific railway services, generating advance insight on rail capacity, and enhancing the ability of TOC planning teams to optimally plan and deliver railway timetables and services. Data-enabled decision-making is expected to improve overall TOC operation-al performance, as demand is more precisely matched with supply in order to realise new cost efficiencies, improve yield, and deliver enhanced customer experiences. The project outcomes address the competition's plan resilience and recoverability theme. **Challenge** Large visitor events create extreme demand peaks within the railway network. Though such events are often scheduled months in advance, accurately predicting how this demand is likely to impact a specific scheduled railway service is notoriously complex due to the lack of advance data about visitors' travel plans. In leu, TOCs often rely on best guess estimations. As recent UEFA Champions League finals in Pairs demonstrated, underestimating visitor travel can have severe consequences for an organisation's reputation, and visitor safety. **Project** A mature EventGo prototype solution will be deployed by UK TOC planning team to predict how a series of sporting fixtures between January and March 2023 in the Yorkshire region are likely to impact time-tabled railway services. During this period, partners will investigate how advanced insight generated by EventGo can be exploited by planners to make intelligent adjustments to scheduled services, e.g., adding capacity to specific services to match high demand, to ensure optimal asset utilisation and deliver the highest level of customer experience. **Value** Demonstration in a live railway environment allows partners to both verify the accuracy of the model's rail travel demand prediction, and to evidence the business value such intelligence can have on TOC operations. In addition, accrued results will facilitate product approval procedures and raise the visibility of the novel solution in the target market. **Consortium** The project is led by You. Smart. Thing. ("YST"), a specialist in intelligent mobility solutions, and supported by two UK TOCs, a top-tier sporting institution and stadium management company, and regional government partners. Professional project management is provided by In The Round ("ITR"), a UK-based consultancy specialising large visitor events travel management.

**EV Assist combines Electric Vehicle user needs with a novel changepoint availability and reservations system, to catalyse modal shift, create a demand-driven EV charging marketplace, optimise infrastructure utilisation and accelerate carbon neutrality.** 95% of respondents to the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) survey that informed of our OLEV funded 'EV Assist' feasibility study, voiced concerns about the availability and accessibility of chargepoints. The study highlighted the diversity of people's potential EV charging requirements, for trips to workplaces, retail parks, education, and healthcare institutions, cultural events, and high street businesses. These challenges are compounded by the lack of adequate charging facilities at many destinations and the fact that \>40% of UK homes don't have access to a private residential chargepoint. Laura Shoaf, MD, WMCA, acknowledges, "In order to get to many destinations, electric vehicle users will have to plan on-street or workplace parking to recharge, or charge en-route." Utilising an easily embedded plugin for websites or apps, EV Assist will enable these types of destinations to provide assurances to prospective visitors that they will be able to reach them and be able to get back again. Travel demand data captured via EV Assist allows Charge Point Operators (CPOs) to understand prospective customers' intended routes and reason for travel, and in turn, to offer clear, viable, end-to-end EV travel solutions that optimise public chargepoint network utilisation. Leading EV researcher, Dr. Florimond Guéniat, states, "The biggest barrier to EV adoption is range and charge anxiety. Destinations that offer changepoint reservations will increase patronage and help to distribute demand, whilst spearheading the roadmap to a carbon neutrality". Through regional in-market deployments with WMCA and ESB Energy, Phase 2 aims to catalyse this multi-sided market, acting as a data exchange between EV users and CPOs, innovatively facilitated through integration with the destinations they plan to visit. This includes EV routing for UK City of Culture 2021 venues and events being added to the incumbent 'Travel Assistant' technology developed by 'You. Smart. Thing.' (YST). Uniquely, it will deliver tailored routes via _available_ chargepoints. An EV Assist travel demand management dashboard will enable CPOs to bid for customers based on real-time demand, thus maximising asset utilisation and giving electric vehicle users the best possible deal. It is an investment that will spur EV adoption, accelerate the roadmap to a carbon neutral future, improve air quality in towns and cities and support economic growth across the UK.

**EV Assist -- Feasibility Study of Vehicle-User-Network Optimisation** The aim of the project is to assess the technical feasibility and commercial potential of "EV Assist", a personalised travel assistant that will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to increase use of electric vehicles and infrastructure. Every car that is replaced with an electric vehicle contributes a CO2 saving of around 133.1g/km. Lower running costs, less maintenance, a lower carbon footprint and cleaner air all add up to significant social, economic, and environmental benefits. But the EV industry is struggling to achieve the necessary adoption to realise these benefits. 'Range anxiety' is at the route of the EV paradox. A perceived lack of access to charge points among would-be EV users, discourages them from switching from traditional combustion engine vehicles, with their established fuel supply chain. This could be overcome with additional charge-point infrastructure but currently operators have no means of capturing granular demand, which is key to calculating return on investment. The UK Government is currently picking up the bill, offering tax incentives, congestion and clean air zone concessions to drive EV adoption. This is costly and unsustainable. EV ASSIST will be designed to enable real-time information exchanges between electric vehicle owners and charge point infrastructure operators regarding near-term charging requirements and the availability of charging infrastructure at any given time. The successful realisation of EV ASSIST can improve the overall customer experience of travelling by EV, directly addressing range anxiety, and helping operators extract maximum value from their charging assets by optimising utilisation per customer. In combination, these EV ASSIST enabled outcomes can make a significant contribution to supporting the UK's electric transition over the next decade. A 6-month research programme has been put together by partners to investigate vehicle-user-network optimisation through desktop research, EV community engagement, and Proof-of-Concept test exercises asking: * How can information be most efficiently captured and shared by EV ASSIST? * How to incentivise end-users to share their EV travel requirements with operators? * How can operators most effectively exploit EV ASSIST generated demand forecasts? * How to scale and commercially exploit EV ASSIST to best effect? * What is the precise impact EV ASSIST can have on the UK government's "Road to Zero" strategy? The project is led by Birmingham-based travel demand and route optimisation platform 'You. Smart. Thing.' (YST) and supported by Transport for West Midlands ("TfWM"), owner and operator of charge point assets across the region.

**GoGreen - Feasibility Study of User-Network Optimisation to Minimize Carbon Emissions** The aim of Phase 1 is to assess the technical feasibility and commercial potential of "GoGreen", a personalised travel assistant that will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to increase use of sustainable travel choices by local authority staff. GoGreen is a Software-as-a-Service platform for local authorities to manage and track both commuting and business travel, enabling cost savings and a greener post-pandemic recovery for the public sector. Simple to deploy and low-cost to operate, GoGreen uses a unique 'eco-algorithm' to help local authority employees identify, select, and book the most appropriate and sustainable journeys, incentivising behaviour change to ensure transport carbon reduction targets are achieved. Features of GoGreen travel itineraries include journey durations, price (and comparison with a car journey), estimated carbon emissions by leg, productivity, and active travel time, allowing users to fully evaluate and get updates on selected journey options. Available travel modes will include walking, cycling, bus, train, low emission vehicles, electric vehicles, bookable fleet vehicles, and ride sharing in cars. GoGreen is designed to reduce the overall number of passenger car journeys made in the UK by innovatively promoting and improving access to sustainable transport modes and shared low emission vehicle fleets. This objective aligns with the UK Government's strategy for making public transport and active travel a "natural choice" and for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to meet its 2050 "net zero" targets. It also aligns with local authority initiatives to encourage sustainable alternatives to car usage, including rail, bus, walking and cycling, car sharing and low emission vehicles. Project leaders You. Smart. Thing. have defined a work programme that sees the definition, development, and demonstration of a mature GoGreen prototype with Dumfries and Galloway Council staff verifying its ability to generate an increase in the use of sustainable transport modes. Research will be conducted to refine the GoGreen eco-algorithms and the deployment model for supporting transport system stakeholders in nudging the travel behaviour to achieve net zero targets. Over a 3-month period from October 2020, Dumfries and Galloway Council will articulate their requirements and explore the feasibility of the GoGreen proposal, demonstrating how the innovation enables local authorities to recover from the impact of the coronavirus without compromising their sustainability principles, whilst also assisting with planning for Phase 2, to build a GoGreen prototype and to test it in real world scenarios.

It would ensure that our systems, data and client confidentiality are adequately protected. The assurances on cyber security will form a key part of our sales messaging to corporate and personal subscribers. We anticipate this will help us to grow the business, as security is the number one concern for potential subscribers.