DATA-DRIVEN INTEGRATED TRANSPORT SOLUTIONS - USING PERSONAS IN POLICY-MAKING

Transport is an enabler for all daily activities in our society and is essential to national economic development. Transport also influences wellbeing directly and indirectly, including enabling access to significant life necessities and activities, promoting physical mobility, and fostering infrastructure development (Delbosc, 2012). Thus, improving the transport system not only enables social and economic development but also enhances wellbeing and equality (Chatterjee et al., 2019). The Government committed to providing public services to all members of society and distributing investment and financial capital to the programmes, places and communities that require it most (Civil Service, 2022; HM Government, 2022). However, expressed sentiments, attitudes, preferences, and behaviour among passengers vary for several reasons (Mooradian & Swan, 2006). To conduct these public engagements, it is necessary to comprehend the behaviour, demands, and preferences of various population groups, to provide the most appropriate intervention, and to identify the most vulnerable groups that should be prioritised.

Persona is a powerful tool for communication and interactive design (Caballero et al., 2014), which could be utilised as a design tool to create user-centric policies and services (Gonzalez de Heredia et al., 2018).

The research aims to examine how data from different sources can be manipulated to comprehend the travel behaviour of distinct demographic groups and support the policy-making process. The two main research questions are:

How can data combined from multiple sources be manipulated to deepen the understanding of travel behaviour of different personas.
How can personas be used to support evidence-based policy making.
The research will be explored and developed in partnership with colleagues from Department for Transport (DfT), focussing on the context of the UK domestic transport system. In investigating the relation between policies on personas, policies will shape the transportation system. Analysing the impacts of policies on personas could be accomplished by reverting to the classic problem in human factors: examining the interaction between the personas and the system designed by the policies. The social-technical framework designed by Davis et al.(2014) and the "onion model" revisited designed by Wilson & Sharples (2015) will be applied to analyse the relationship between personas (people) and related elements shaped by policy (technologies, culture, process, infrastructure, goals).

The research will be divided into two parts.

The first section is devoted to investigating the interaction between travellers' personas and other elements in transport system. Multiple data sources including national survey data source (2002 - 2021), the UK census data (to 2022), and other digital footprint data will be used to widen and deepen the narrative of DfT personas.

In the second phase of the research project, a qualitative approach employing human factors methods and policy analysis will be used to examine the application of personas in evidence-based policy making. A framework that measures and compares the impacts of different policy options on different personas will be created. Instead of recommending a particular policy, the research will concentrate on improving decision-making techniques. Thus, the research can fill the gap in knowledge regarding the use of personas in design, particularly how personas can positively impact policy-making processes.

We will collaborate with over 40 partners drawn from across FMCG and Food; Creative Industries; Health and Wellbeing; Smart Mobility; Finance; Enabling technologies; and Policy, Law and Society. These will benefit from engagement with our CDT through the following established mechanisms:

- Training multi-disciplinary leaders. Our partners will benefit from being able to recruit highly skilled individuals who are able to work across technologies, methods and sectors and in multi-disciplinary teams. We will deliver at least 65 skilled PhD graduates into the Digital Economy.

- Internships. Each Horizon student undertakes at least one industry internship or exchange at an external partner. These internships have a benefit to the student in developing their appreciation of the relevance of their PhD to the external societal and industrial context, and have a benefit to the external partner through engagement with our students and their multidisciplinary skill sets combined with an ability to help innovate new ideas and approaches with minimal long-term risk. Internships are a compulsory part of our programme, taking place in the summer of the first year. We will deliver at least 65 internships with partners.

- Industry-led challenge projects. Each student participates in an industry-led group project in their second year. Our partners benefit from being able to commission focused research projects to help them answer a challenge that they could not normally fund from their core resources. We will deliver at least 15 such projects (3 a year) throughout the lifetime of the CDT.

- Industry-relevant PhD projects. Each student delivers a PhD thesis project in collaboration with at least one external partner who benefits from being able to engage in longer-term and deeper research that they would not normally be able to undertake, especially for those who do not have their own dedicated R&D labs. We will deliver at least 65 such PhDs over the lifetime of this CDT renewal.

- Public engagement. All students receive training in public engagement and learn to communicate their findings through press releases, media coverage.

This proposal introduces two new impact channels in order to further the impact of our students' work and help widen our network of partners.

- The Horizon Impact Fund. Final year students can apply for support to undertake short impact projects. This benefits industry partners, public and third sector partners, academic partners and the wider public benefit from targeted activities that deepen the impact of individual students' PhD work. This will support activities such as developing plans for spin-outs and commercialization; establishing an IP position; preparing and documenting open-source software or datasets; and developing tourable public experiences.

- ORBIT as an impact partner for RRI. Students will embed findings and methods for Responsible Research Innovation into the national training programme that is delivered by ORBIT, the Observatory for Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT (www.orbit-rri.org). Through our direct partnership with ORBIT all Horizon CDT students will be encouraged to write up their experience of RRI as contributions to ORBIT so as to ensure that their PhD research will not only gain visibility but also inform future RRI training and education. PhD projects that are predominantly in the area of RRI are expected to contribute to new training modules, online tools or other ORBIT services.