Dr. Mattioli will share insights from over a decade of research on transport poverty, highlighting how his indicators are shaping EU policy and the data challenges behind measuring vulnerability to rising fuel prices
Abstract from the speaker:
The challenge of reducing climate emissions in the EU is leading to the introduction of pricing schemes like ETS2, which is expected to substantially increase the price of transport fuel starting from 2027. In the run up to that, the EU has introduced a Social Climate Fund to help those who are most vulnerable to such price increases. This requires member states to put forward indicators to identify such vulnerable groups and regions. This has led to a surge of policy and research interest for “transport poverty” as a sort of transport equivalent of (domestic) “energy poverty”. In this presentation, I start by recounting my experience as a researcher on this topic for more than 10 years. In this capacity, in the mid-to-late 2010s I put forward quantitative indicators of vulnerability to fuel price increases, some of which are now being adopted by policymakers at the EU, national and local levels. Each of these indicators comes with its own set of challenges related to e.g., data availability, data access, data quality, and data analysis. In the second part of the presentation, I will provide an overview of the indicators put forward in more recent research, with a particular focus on the data challenges that they highlight, and of recent EU efforts to publish transport poverty and accessibility data that is comparable across the entire union. The challenge of reducing climate emissions in the EU is leading to the introduction of pricing schemes like ETS2, which is expected to substantially increase the price of transport fuel starting from 2027. In the run up to that, the EU has introduced a Social Climate Fund to help those who are most vulnerable to such price increases. This requires member states to put forward indicators to identify such vulnerable groups and regions. This has led to a surge of policy and research interest for “transport poverty” as a sort of transport equivalent of (domestic) “energy poverty”. In this presentation, I start by recounting my experience as a researcher on this topic for more than 10 years. In this capacity, in the mid-to-late 2010s I put forward quantitative indicators of vulnerability to fuel price increases, some of which are now being adopted by policymakers at the EU, national and local levels. Each of these indicators comes with its own set of challenges related to e.g., data availability, data access, data quality, and data analysis. In the second part of the presentation, I will provide an overview of the indicators put forward in more recent research, with a particular focus on the data challenges that they highlight, and of recent EU efforts to publish transport poverty and accessibility data that is comparable across the entire union.
About the speaker:
Dr Giulio Mattioli is Research Fellow at the Department of Transport Planning at TU Dortmund University (Germany) and Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds. His research addresses car dependence and carbon lock-in in the transport sector, with a particular focus on issues of transport poverty, affordability and energy vulnerability.
He has authored several articles for journals such as Transportation Research Part A, Journal of Transport Geography and Energy Research & Social Science, and has guest-edited a special issue of Transport Policy on ‘Household transport costs, economic stress and energy vulnerability’. He has led the research project (t)ERES (‘Energy-related economic stress in the UK, at the interface between transport, housing and fuel poverty’, 2014-2016), funded by EPSRC and linked to the DEMAND Research Centre. He is advisory board member for the LiLi project (‘Living Well Within Limits’) at the University of Leeds. Before leaving the UK in 2018, he was one of the Co-Investigators of the CREDS Research Centre. He currently leads the ‘Long distance society’ research project (2018-2022) funded by the German Research Foundation, which explores the links between long-distance travel, social change and climate change.
Bring your own lunch bag! Light pastries and drinks will be available in case you forget to bring it.
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The Data Science Brown Bag Series is an informal and interactive gathering where participants bring their own brown bag lunch and engage in discussions on research and insights the field of data and computational social science (light pastries and drinks will be available if you forget your lunch bag!).
The series provides a platform for data enthusiasts, researchers, and practitioners to share their experiences, best practices, and emerging methodologies and research in using data science to analyze and understand social and political phenomena. The brown bag talk series is for anyone interested in data science and social science to network, learn, and share ideas in a casual and friendly setting.
- William Lowe, Senior Research Scientist
- Aliya Boranbayeva, Associate Communications and Events | Data Science Lab
