Browsing by Author "Shammut M"

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    Automated and disrupted mobilities: Insights from the New Zealand industry sector
    (Elsevier Ltd, 2025-10) Shammut M; Imran M
    This paper aims to understand the readiness of automated vehicles (AVs) technology in New Zealand (NZ) through the lens of the mobilities paradigm. Drawing on interviews with AVs industry participants, the findings are categorised into three interrelated themes: (1) hard infrastructure, (2) soft infrastructure, and (3) future infrastructure development. First, hard infrastructure highlights the complexities of urban environments and AVs difficulty in predicting road users' movements. Second, soft infrastructure reveals that connectivity standardisation could enhance AVs communication, yet coverage inconsistencies may disrupt AVs Over-The-Air (OTA) updates. The findings also show how the AVs industry is perceived as ‘owners’ of AVs personal user data, raising ethical concerns around monetisation and surveillance. Third, future infrastructure development could help facilitate AV deployment, particularly through greater collaboration between and across the tech-industry, government, ‘ethical hackers’, and the use of techniques like ‘network slicing’. This paper concludes that while achieving driving autonomy is complex, deploying AVs in limited urban settings (e.g., shuttle services) offers opportunities to incrementally learn from real-world conditions. Overall, this paper responds to controversial and underexplored questions around AVs data ownership, industry use of personal data, infrastructure resilience, and government-industry collaboration for AV-ready cities. This paper contributes to the mobilities paradigm by extending our understanding of the unintended technological consequences of AVs uptake, and offers context-specific insights for policymakers, urban planners, and the industry to better understand the barriers and opportunities towards AVs implementation in future cities.
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    Governance of automated mobilities transition in Aotearoa New Zealand
    (Elsevier Ltd., 2024-08-01) Shammut M; Imran M
    This paper explores how political-institutional factors influence the transition towards automated vehicles (AVs) in New Zealand (NZ). Using the lens of ‘mobilities paradigm’ and analysing policy documents along with interviews data from government officials, the findings reveal the complexity of governing AVs transition due to fragmented responsibility, contested visions, and high interdependency across government agencies. The findings suggest that strong political leadership coupled with infrastructure investments and building regulators’ capability are important catalysts of change towards AVs transition in NZ. The paper concludes that the complex governance environment, and the central government action and inaction to set priority for the AVs agenda, may hinder or facilitate a smooth transition towards AVs in NZ. This paper contributes to the mobilities paradigm by enriching our understanding of the political-institutional challenges associated with the emergence of AVs and offers illuminating policy guidance to better inform decision-making around governing the future transition towards AVs.