GOAL

Growing Older, stAying mobiLe: Transport Needs for an Ageing Society

Current prognoses show an increase of people older than 65 years in Europe from 17.1 % to 30 % of the population. This trend equals a rise from 84.6 million persons in 2008 to 151.5 million in 2060. Similarly, the number of people aged 80 years or over is projected to almost triple from 21.8 million in 2008 to 61.4 million in 2060. To actively integrate the elderly into society and to ensure their independence, it is critical to make transportation means available and take their specific needs into account. Thus it is possible to enable mobility up to an old age.

Although previous research has considered the needs of older persons, an integrative overview is missing. Furthermore older people have been described as a homogeneous group. However, this population is quite heterogeneous. The people differ in:

• Physical and mental characteristics
• Travel patterns
• Life styles
• LTransport needs

The EU-research project GOAL (Growing Older, stAying mobiLe) will take these differences as a starting point to develop an action plan. This plan will focus on needs of older persons and take physical and mental abilities into account to develop profiles of older people. Through these profiles future research and development steps can be derived.

To achieve the objectives GOAL will use the extensive available knowledge within the consortium and also the knowledge of stakeholders and experts. Thus a comprehensive overview of mobility needs can be developed. Furthermore six workshops will be held, each aiming at different aspects of mobility, to ensure that different stake-holders can contribute to and influence the development of the action plan.

A short description of the main objectives of GOAL:

• Development of profiles of older persons based on physical and mental characteristics
• To take life style and environment into account as well as demographics to identify mobility patterns and needs
• Development of future scenarios of mobility patterns and information processing
• Transfer of knowledge and new insights within six workshops
• Creation of an action plan with innovative solutions for mobility of older people

Next to ika project partners are: TNO from the Netherlands, the Transportation Research Group of Southampton University (Great Britain), the Fundación CIDAUT (Spain), the University of Florence UNIFI (Italy), as well as the Austrian Institute of Technology.