On September 29 at 11:00 a.m. in Room 320, Sebastian Dannehl successfully defended his master’s thesis on the topic “Data-driven innovation processes in public transportation – the rebus case.” The examiners were Dr. Anne Gutschmidt and Prof. Kurt Sandkuhl from the Chair of Business Informatics. The photo shows Sebastian Dannehl, Thomas Nienkerk (rebus) and Kurt Sandkuhl after the defense.
Abstract
Local public transit services have undergone significant changes in recent years, and new mobility solutions have emerged. Due to increasing competitive pressure, transit operators in this sector face the challenge of optimizing and improving their existing service portfolios or developing entirely new services and processes. This can be systematically implemented using innovation process models. In particular, demand-responsive forms of public transit—especially on-demand services integrated into the public transit system—generate large volumes of data. This existing travel data can be leveraged to develop innovations.
As part of a case study at the company rebus - Regionalbus Rostock GmbH, an adapted data-driven innovation process was used to examine the potential offered by the use of travel data from on-demand services integrated into public transit for the sustainable and passenger-friendly design and development of public transit in rural areas. In addition, the study examined which data can be used for which new offerings and processes. It also sought to analyze how the innovation process models proposed in the literature need to be adapted so that they can be applied in the context of on-demand services integrated with public transit based on travel data, and how data-driven innovation processes can be adapted for the needs of rebus.