projects & research

In most industrialized countries, older adults comprise the fastest growing segment of the population, and in many, one in every four persons will be aged 65 or over in 2030, and by 2050 the population of those over 80 years is expected to triple in most countries.

This situation will place new and growing demands on transport systems: future transport systems and services will play an essential role in supporting independent, healthy ageing.

The aim of the Silver research area is to develop systems for the evaluation of the comfort level perceived by elderly in moving to and stay in a public space.

These systems can be used to:

• build recommendation systems to suggest designers how to modify public spaces
• build simulation models in order to understand how the fruition of public spaces by elderly people can be improved without limiting other age groups

According to these points, the Silver research area is strictly connected to the CROWD one. Joint research proposals have been presented in order to study the pilgrimage of aged people at Hajj (CRYSTALS). This project analyses how the existing transportation infrastructures can be fully exploited by aged pilgrims gorups without being an obstacle for younger people.