Future Mobility Living Lab

About Living Lab

For the City of Casey, a Living Lab is a place-based approach to driving innovation through co-design with partners, community, and Council. It enables businesses, academia, community, research institutes / organisations and start-ups to collaborate on local challenges and develop solutions that will address them at scale. A Living Lab requires three components: 

1. Problem: Complex problem that our community faces and is only likely to increase with our growth.
    
2. People: A range of people from business, community, not-for-profits, education, etc., that could address the problem.
    
3. Place: A physical location that can bring innovation to life and create a testbed for our community.  

The objective of the City of Casey Living Lab is to efficiently trial, evaluate and potentially scale up innovative ideas that support Council strategies to stimulate the local economy, address environmental challenges, and improve community outcomes through private-public partnerships and innovation processes.

Responding to complex challenges requires new approaches and innovative concepts. The Living Lab aims to identify solutions that can meet the community's needs in new ways and evolve with community feedback and insights. There are a range of funding pathways for Living Labs, including grants for trialling and research.

The Future Mobility Living Lab

The City of Casey is Victoria's 3rd fastest growing municipality, behind Wyndham and Whittlesea and the 8th fastest-growing municipality in Australia. Our population is forecast to grow from approximately 323,604 in 2017 to 514,800 by 2041. Due to our current large population and the expected growth rates, it is critical that we start to understand how to plan for a better future.

The Future Mobility Living Lab is a collaborative playground where ideas thrive and solutions are generated through community engagement and co-creation. It aims to revolutionise how people move around the city through partnerships and open dialogue, fostering a safe, inclusive, and to be more environmentally conscious. The Future Mobility Living Lab enables the testing of emerging technologies in response to community needs, ensuring that the City of Casey stays at the forefront of mobility innovation by addressing Safety & Inclusion & Sustainability.

Focus Areas of the Future Mobility Living Lab grant

Through the Future Mobility Living Lab grant, the City of Casey aims to fund outcomes that successfully deliver and validate innovative solutions, producing measurable economic, social, and environmental benefits, advancing a more connected community in Casey. Solutions should address one or more of the challenges presented in the following key areas:

• Safety & Inclusion: One of the primary objectives is to enable a more significant movement of people of all abilities within the City of Casey. Emphasising safety and accessibility, the Living Lab aims to create solutions that cater to the needs of everyone, regardless of age or physical limitations. The How Might We statement for this theme becomes, "How Might We enable a more significant movement of people of all abilities around the City of Casey?"  
   

• Sustainability: To reduce the city's carbon footprint and congestion, the Living Lab seeks to stimulate alternative modes of transport beyond cars. By encouraging sustainable options, the City of Casey can take a giant leap towards becoming a greener community. The corresponding How Might We statement is, "How might we stimulate other modes of transport in the City of Casey besides cars?"

• Emerging Technology: Embracing cutting-edge technologies is essential to achieving the future mobility vision. The Living Lab is a hub for exploring and integrating emerging technologies into the city's transport infrastructure, ensuring that the City of Casey becomes a pioneer in smart mobility. The associated How Might We statement reads,  "How might we create a Smarter City that promotes safe, inclusive, and sustainable transportation while strengthening community connections?"  

​​​Benefits are expected for the broad community, but projects may address a specific target group or area in the City of Casey. The types of organisations we are looking to partner with include established businesses, start-ups with more than one year of activity, not-for-profits, social enterprises, co-operatives, research institutions, universities, and community groups.

Types of grants available

There are two grants available for the Future Mobility Living Lab. These are: 

Note: If your organisation or project is not eligible for the grant, there are other ways for you to participate and collaborate with trial partners and research partners via our Future Mobility Living Lab Pop-ups. You can submit your expression of interest to be informed of these opportunities.

Eligibility

Please read through the below sections to ensure the eligibility of your project

Trial grant assessment criteria

We are looking for projects that are: 

• Innovative: solutions should deliver outcomes by testing and scaling cutting-edge products and services.
   
• Data-led: accessible and transparent data insights should be integrated into the proposed solution to ensure measurable outcomes and tangible benefits.
   
• Local providers: to maximise benefits for the local economy, local providers will be favoured, although any Australian Commercial business and social enterprise is eligible to submit a proposal.
   
• Technology-powered: when a particular technology product is central to the delivery of a proposed solution, the provider needs to ensure reliability, data privacy/management, and share prior testing results.
   
• Collaborative: partnerships for the trial are encouraged, and the solution would be beneficial to enable cross-collaboration to achieve maximum benefits and reach a broader target.  

Trial grant assessment criteria

Research grant assessment criteria

We are looking for researchers that are:

• Currently conducting research in the broader field of future mobility with research expertise in the fields of:
  • Sustainability 
  • Safety / Inclusion 
  • Emerging Technology 
• Willing to collaborate with the City of Casey, Trial Partners, Community Groups, and other organisations engaging via the Community Pop-ups.

Research grant assessment criteria

Assessment Process

1. Funding applications are checked for eligibility by Council officers.  
    
2. Eligible applications are then assessed by the internal Living Lab judging panel that makes recommendations to the internal Future Mobility Living Lab Steering Committee for endorsement.  
   
   Note: The full amount requested may not be approved; the assessment panel may recommend partial funding.  Consideration will also be given to the total funding available and the distribution of funding across the priority areas. 
    
3. Successful and unsuccessful recipients will be notified of the outcome of their application at the end of the process. Successful applicants will be invited to join the launch event on 27th October 2023, 9:00 am – 5:30 pm at Bunjil Place during the Innovation Summit. 

How to apply

Online applications open on 14 August 2023 on the Smarty Grants platform.

Applications must include additional information as specified. Supporting documents and attachments must be in electronic format and submitted as part of the online application process. The application must be submitted by the due date. No paper applications will be accepted or applications outside of Smarty Grants will be considered. Late or incomplete applications will not be considered.

If your application is successful

• We will notify you by email or phone to organise a project kick-off meeting.
• You will need to read Council’s Grants Policy.
• If you have any outstanding payments to Council, you must clear these before we can pay the grant.  
• If required, you will need to have all Council permits and approval obtained before grant funds can be paid.

Useful information

The following links contain information that may be useful in preparing a Living Lab funding application: 

• City of Casey Council Plan  
• Challenge Brief 
• Grant Guidelines
• Future Mobility Living Lab page (for organisations)

What are the conditions of the funding?

All successful applicants must adhere to the conditions outlined in the City of Casey’s Grants Policy (October 2017), available from Council’s website. The following conditions also apply:

• Successful applicants will be required to enter into a funding and service agreement with the City of Casey, which lists funding conditions.  This must be signed, and appropriate documentation provided before funds are issued. 
   
• Successful applicants will be required to provide a statement of expenditure or an audited statement at the completion funding period. If Council’s grant funds are not spent, all remaining funds must be returned to Council. 
   
• Please note that a Living Lab Funding application will not necessarily result in funding or may result in only a portion of the amount requested being allocated. 
   
• Groups will need to satisfy acquittal requirements for previous Council grants and funding before funds will be released. 
   
• Depending on outcomes and benefits for Casey, some successful applicants may be invited to scale up their project with additional funding provided at the discretion of the Council.
   
• Council may also choose to take the learnings from the trial to inform future market activities at the discretion of the Council.

Reporting and Acquittal 

After completing your project, you must tell us how you spent the grant money and the project's outcomes. This is known as an acquittal process. You must complete the acquittal process online within 60 days of completing the project. The reporting format and agreed outputs will be provided upon the successful appointment of the grant.