ital technologies are transforming urban development, with the potential to address today’s social and environmental challenges and regional disparities. Their application ranges from eHealth to smart mobility and many others. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are one of the innovations that are expected to dramatically change our mobility patterns and, potentially, also our way of life. For their optimal deployment, local authorities must anticipate and reflect on how transformative innovations can contribute to safe, sustainable, and citizen-friendly futures for cities. For doing so, the interests of stakeholders and citizens also need to be considered.

New challenges require new governance models. Small and medium-sized cities tend to be overlooked when it comes to the governance of innovations, but they face these challenges, too. GINEVRA aims to strengthen the capacity of small and medium-sized cities for the responsible, multi-level governance of transformative innovations. We examine a challenging case of responsible, multi-level governance to deploy a transformative innovation: the introduction of autonomous vehicles. We aim to develop policy solutions to support small and medium-sized cities in better governing transformative innovations to reap benefits, avoid pitfalls, and ensure broad, cross-sector engagement.

ITAS will support methodology development by contributing specific expertise on responsible research and innovation (RRI) applications and AV deployment. This includes governance issues as well as stakeholder/citizen engagement. ITAS will also be involved in capacity building activities. This covers, among other things, support for the development of an online toolkit, the AV Readiness Assessment Tool, and relevant tools for stakeholder commitment and citizen involvement. Moreover, ITAS will play a particular role in supporting the German pilot project (Bad Schoenborn). ITAS will conduct empirical research on the organization of everyday life, mobility needs, and attitudes towards AF in Bad Schoenborn, contributing to the participatory development of a solid basis for local implementation and governance activities.

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