Simone SILVA

Biographical note
Academic Background: Architect and Urbanist Bachelors (2000) and Masters in Transport Engineering (2005) from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Short Courses in Local Economic Development (2011) from IHS – South Africa and Management (2014) from COPPEAD/Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Professional Background:Architect of the City of Rio de Janeiro since 2008. Planning Manager in the Transport Secretary since 2013, working on Mobility Plans and designs of interchange hubs. Experience in public transport plans for Mega Events such as: FIFA Confederation Cup 2013, FIFA World Cup 2014 and RIO2016 Olympics and Paralympics Games.

Presentation: APPs partnerships for mega event
Hundred thousands of tourists with different languages, a new public transport infrastructure (122km of BRT, 15 km of metro, 7 km of Tram, 16 new interchange nodes) and one year to come to the opening ceremony for RIO2016 Olympic Games were the challenges that the transport technicians had to face to explain how spectators and accredited (from the city and outside) and daily users would travel during August 2016 in the City of Rio de Janeiro. Added to that, it also had institutional barriers like: long bidding process and few resources. Establishing win-win partnership with existing apps was the option. The apps wanted new users and the use of Olympic City brand. The transport secretary wanted the tools to spread the Public Transport Plan of RIO2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games and to upgrade the level of digitalisation in the daily routine after the event.
A formal city resolution was prepared to stablish a relation with world apps. The main requirements were: public transport exclusive, minimum 4 languages (Portuguese, English, French and Spanish), more than one operational system, real time information, multimodal trip planning, adapted to visually impaired, push messages, a local representative and the commitment to adapt the results of the search to attend the Public Transport Plan. Two apps were able to do that: the Moovit from Israel and the Trafi from Lituania. They also became part of Integrated Center of Urban Mobility (CIMU) established in Rio Operations Center to guarantee the integration of public transport operation and to solve contingencies. The push messages geographically localized became the main tool to communicate to users.
The main results were 75.000 new downloads of public transport apps, 563.000 trips planned and 3.500.000 push messages read during August 2016. The partnership with apps went beyond trip planning and became a real-time communication tool to public transport users during and after the event. The City of Rio de Janeiro used the visibility of a mega event to stablish digital technology partnerships with world apps and to upgraded the communication with daily public transport users.