The German Sustainability Award is the national award for top achievements in sustainability in business, municipalities and research. With eight competitions, over 800 applicants and 2,000 guests at the events, the prize is the largest of its kind in Europe. The award is presented by the German Sustainability Award Foundation in cooperation with the German government, municipal umbrella organisations, trade associations, civil society organisations and research institutions.

highQ Computerlösungen has been nominated for the German Sustainability Award 2021 with its highQ MobilitySuite. Many report on sustainable mobility solutions, but highQ has already successfully implemented the first solutions in Osnabrück and the Swabian Federation.

In Osnabrück there is a uniform and digital access to the various mobility offers. Customers can use the multimodal mobility platform to enter their route, receive suggestions for routes and means of transport and, of course, be billed at the best price and also directly via the platform.

In the Schwabenbund, the passengers of the two regional transport associations Mobility Company for Local Transport in Allgäu (mona) and Transport Association of Central Swabia (VVM) with a total of 24 participating transport companies were enabled to buy any public transport fare product via a digital sales platform - a web shop or a smartphone app.

highQ has already received several awards for its innovative solutions. We are driven by our vision: to create sustainable everyday mobility for the common good and intelligent use of the infrastructure by changing mobility behavior, avoiding traffic and optimizing it.

Digitization makes it possible to make the best possible use of existing urban infrastructure such as parking garages, public transport or the road network. Congestion and overload can be avoided: by shifting in space (different routes), time (different travel times) and means of transport (car, bike, bus, ride sharing, eScooter, ride-pooling, pedestrians, etc.).

The pressure to act is high overall: large cities with particulate matter alarms and congested inner cities are just as much under pressure as medium-sized rural centres, where the main task is to maintain a nationwide regular service and improve connections from the partly sparsely populated region. Therefore, even medium-sized cities with digitised mobility offers can control commuter traffic and supply logistics. The city can, for example, help to digitise the route to work for employees and thus for local companies.

Cities can quickly benefit from digitization if they network their heterogeneous and often still analog services. Something is happening in this respect: some municipalities are focusing on cycling, others are developing apps for traffic jam communication. However, it would make even more sense to bundle them in one platform. First, to collect concrete data and second, to create incentives for citizens. The bundling of a wide variety of traffic data in the highQ MobilitySuite also makes it possible to use the advantages of artificial intelligence for mobility services. Through traffic data acquisition, learning systems can use mobility forecasts to make a preventive contribution, e.g. to avoid traffic jams, traffic flows can be analysed in real time, the capacity utilisation of public transport can be predicted and thus optimised according to demand.

A USP of a platform solution lies in the mobility data obtained from citizens: This data is collected by the city, stored on secure servers and can be used in accordance with DSGVO (German law on the protection of personal data) or anonymised. On the basis of this data, urban mobility can be improved and networked with existing information.

We are eagerly awaiting the jury's decision and are delighted with the nomination!