Technological advances relevant to transport – understanding what drives them

Abstract

Transport policy makers are increasingly perplexed by the pace of change in their sector and by the increasing influence of external actors. This leads to a variety of responses, including "business as usual", technological optimism, technological fatalism and technological ignorance. To explore this perplexity and its justification, we examine four areas of technological advance relevant to transport: mobility as a service; unmanned aerial vehicles (drones); automated vehicles; and telehealth. In each case, we identify the principal underlying shifts which are driving these technological advances, concluding that there is considerable overlap: three of the advances rely on ubiquitous sensing and on artificial intelligence and all four rely, to some degree, on connectedness. We then explore these three "drivers", finding that progress is steadier than may be generally thought. We discuss the implications for our set of transport-related technological developments, concluding that policy makers could approach the future with greater confidence than is currently typical. They could also draw on the concepts of anticipatory governance to support their management of emerging technology and, at the same time, of the influence of external actors. Highlights Anxiety concerning the future can lead transport policy makers to make poor decisions  Many technological developments relevant to transport share common underlying "drivers"  The "drivers" of many transport-relevant technological developments are moving relatively predictably  Transport policy makers can afford to be more confident about the future  Anticipatory governance may aid the management of technological change

Data driven identification of international cutting edge science and technologies using SpaCy

“…According to the 2020 Gartner emerging technology maturity curve, the autonomous driving L4 technology is in the disillusioned bubble period, and the autonomous driving L5 technology entered an expected inflation period in 2019 caused by the technology trigger in 2018. The autopilot technology entered an expected inflation period in 2020 [ 77 ].…”

The Moderating Role of Pro-Innovative Leadership and Gender as an Enabler for Future Drone Transports in Healthcare Systems

“…Both Mion [ 36 ] and Knoblauch et al [ 4 ] discussed the importance of having dedicated project management to support the implementation of drones through the various innovation phases. Change is not driven by the technological solution alone but in combination with the adoption by users, which helps structure the solutions [ 33 , 55 ]. Incentives for experimentation, learning, network building, and vision building have been suggested as crucial elements in the push for change [ 44 , 52 , 56 ].…”

Accessing performance of transport sector considering risks of climate change and traffic accidents: joint bounded-adjusted measure and Luenberger decomposition

“…What is more, Miao et al, (2019b) emphasized that the sustainable development of economy depends on technological progress to a great extent. Indeed, the sustainable development of transport sector also remarkably relies on technological progress (Cohen and Jones, 2020). Especially, against the background of fast industrialization and urbanization in China, transport production technologies are dedicated to promoting a comprehensive transport network and gaining output value added, whereas ignoring traffic accidents and greenhouse gas emissions.…”