Press, May 13 2026
EMERALDS Project Successfully Completed Following 36 Months of AI-Driven Urban Mobility Innovation
INLECOM proudly announces the successful completion of the EMERALDS Project (Extreme-scale Urban Mobility Data Analytics as a Service), a Horizon Europe initiative coordinated by INLECOM over a 36-month period from January 2023 to December 2025.
The EMERALDS project addressed one of the key challenges facing modern cities and mobility ecosystems: the ability to process, analyse, and act upon massive and heterogeneous urban mobility datasets in real time across edge, fog, and cloud environments. By bringing together leading research organisations, technology providers, and urban mobility stakeholders from across Europe, the project successfully delivered scalable, interoperable, and privacy-compliant AI-driven mobility analytics solutions capable of supporting smarter and safer urban environments.
EU Innovation Radar Recognition
One of the project’s most significant achievements was the recognition of 14 EMERALDS innovations by the EU Innovation Radar, highlighting the project’s contribution to the future of interoperable, scalable, and privacy-compliant mobility analytics in Europe.
The recognised innovations included AI-powered crowd density prediction models, mobility data compression and fusion methodologies, traffic flow prediction and transport state estimation tools, edge- and cloud-based analytics toolkits, privacy-preserving computation wrappers, and advanced real-time floating car data analytics services.
This recognition demonstrates the project’s strong innovation potential and the readiness of several EMERALDS solutions for further uptake and long-term exploitation.
Delivering a Comprehensive Mobility Analytics Ecosystem
Throughout its lifecycle, EMERALDS developed more than 35 reusable and containerised analytics services, known as “emeralds,” covering the full urban mobility analytics pipeline, including data ingestion, processing, compression, machine learning, forecasting, and visualisation.
These services were integrated into the project’s Mobility AI-as-a-Service (MAIaaS) platform, enabling real-time mobility analytics and AI-driven decision support across the full cloud-to-edge computing continuum.
Importantly, the EMERALDS toolset has been openly released through GitHub, ensuring long-term accessibility and contributing to a more open and interoperable European mobility data ecosystem.
Real-World Validation Across European Cities
The EMERALDS technologies were validated through three operational use cases across Europe:
- Risk assessment and crowd forecasting during large-scale public events in The Hague, supporting municipal safety planning and real-time decision-making.
- Multimodal traffic network management in Rotterdam, improving traffic flow prediction and bottleneck forecasting.
- Trip characteristics inference and traffic flow analytics in Riga, supporting more accurate public transport demand prediction and mobility analysis.
The project also demonstrated significant operational and economic impact. AI-driven route advice and traffic prediction services achieved up to 95% accuracy, while AI-based queue length estimation demonstrated substantial cost savings and operational efficiency improvements compared to traditional traffic detection infrastructure.
Wider European and Societal Impact
Beyond its technical achievements, EMERALDS contributed directly to Europe’s strategic priorities for data-driven and sustainable mobility.
The project advanced interoperable and scalable mobility data analytics across the full cloud-to-edge continuum, reducing integration barriers and enabling AI services that comply with GDPR and the emerging EU AI Act framework. By relying on open standards and openly available services, EMERALDS supports the practical implementation of the European Data Strategy and strengthens Europe’s position in the global mobility data economy.
Additionally, the project’s forecasting and risk assessment capabilities have direct applicability in crisis-response and societal resilience scenarios, including emergency evacuations, crowded public events, urban congestion management, and real-time mobility monitoring.
Strong Dissemination and Scientific Results
Over the course of the project, EMERALDS achieved strong dissemination, communication, and scientific impact, including:
- 29 scientific publications, 26 of which were open access
- 14 innovations recognised by the EU Innovation Radar
- Participation in 40 third-party events
- Organisation of 10 webinars
- 17 project videos produced
- More than 700 social media followers
- Multiple policy and stakeholder engagement activities
- 100% achievement of all project milestones
INLECOM’s Role as Project Coordinator
As Project Coordinator, INLECOM played a central role in steering the project’s management, innovation strategy, ethics compliance, and consortium governance throughout the entire 36-month lifecycle.
Beyond coordination activities, INLECOM also contributed technically to the development of AI-driven mobility analytics services, including probabilistic trip chaining and zone entries/exits prediction models integrated into the EMERALDS MAIaaS platform and validated through real-world urban mobility use cases.
INLECOM would also like to sincerely thank Riku Leppänen, Project Officer from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT), Unit G1 – Data Policy and Innovation, for his continuous support throughout the project.
The successful completion of EMERALDS demonstrates the strength of European collaboration in developing next-generation mobility analytics solutions capable of enabling smarter, safer, and more resilient cities.
