Ethics at the Edge: EMERALDS Insights for Responsible Mobility Data

🗓️ 04/12/2025 

⏰ 11:00 - 11:30 CET

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Urban mobility is becoming increasingly data-driven, yet the most valuable insights often come from information that is sensitive by nature. As cities intensify efforts to optimise traffic management, improve public transport and react swiftly to emergencies, the question becomes unavoidable: how can we unlock the power of mobility data while maintaining the highest ethical and privacy standards?

This event explores how EMERALDS is shaping responsible pathways for data innovation. At the core lies an edge-computing approach designed to minimise data exposure — keeping up to half of sensitive information processed locally rather than shared across networks. It is a practical step towards protecting user privacy without compromising the decision-making capabilities of public authorities.

We will examine the ethical reflections that guided this approach, from transparency to data minimisation, alongside challenges such as ensuring data utility for public planning while upholding fundamental rights. The webinar will discuss lessons learned and best practices that cities, developers and policymakers can adopt when dealing with complex data ecosystems.

Applied Ethical Lessons from EMERALDS

EMERALDS has showcased what this balance looks like in practice. The project’s edge computing architecture — which keeps around half of sensitive mobility data processed locally — is a concrete step towards reducing exposure, minimising risk and strengthening trust. Beyond the technical design, EMERALDS demonstrated that high-granularity mobility analytics demand continuous ethical safeguards around privacy, fairness and explainability. Through real-world use cases, the project showed how responsible AI principles can be operationalised across ingestion, modelling and decision-support workflows, proving that precision and protection do not have to be in conflict.

Recommendations & Best Practices for the Mobility Sector

The webinar will also present practical guidance for cities, planners and operators seeking to deploy mobility analytics responsibly. Building on EMERALDS results and IEA guidance, we will explore transparency mechanisms, fairness assessments, privacy-by-design strategies and adaptive governance approaches. These recommendations align closely with the obligations reinforced through the EU AI Act, which introduces documentation, monitoring and oversight requirements — particularly relevant as mobility data systems evolve towards high-risk AI classification.

Whether you work in mobility, digital ethics, urban governance or data infrastructure, this session offers a grounded view into what it means to build trust-centred technologies. Expect a concise deep dive, practical takeaways and the opportunity to rethink how mobility systems can be both powerful and fair.

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Agenda of the session