With October 2024 the new project SAFARI started, which is not about observing wild animals, but about the mobility barriers of vulnerable groups in rural areas. The aim of this collaborative research endeavor is to make barriers visible and to include data sources beyond traditional mobility data. Driven by rapidly advancing digitalisation, new opportunities are emerging to harness innovative data sources, such as earth observation and social media data, for the mobility context. Exploring these possibilities is the focus of our research activities in this collaborative project.

Another new and particularly exciting aspect of this project is the cooperation between several working groups within the Department of Geoinformatics under the leadership of the Mobility Lab.

In collaboration with the research groups Earth Observation Analytics and Geo-Social Analytics Lab, we are working on identifying and processing suitable data sources for the 30-month-duration of the project in order to better recognize mobility barriers in the further proceedings of the project and to take them into account in planning.

The SAFARI project is led by Herry Consult. Other project partners are Research Studios Austria iSPACE and the Mobilitätszentrale Burgenland.

SAFARI is supported with funds from the BMK.

You can find more about SAFARI on the project page and in the FFG Database.