The agreement is part of a project launched this year to improve conditions for passengers waiting at stations. Senseable City Lab will collaborate with SNCF and its Arep Design Lab through an action, construction and design methodology. Experiments will be conducted this year at Paris Nord, Lille Europe and Aix-en-Provence TGV stations.

“In the long-term, this collaboration will offer our customers more personalised comfort and will be translated into published research in academic journals,” says Mr Patrick Ropert, general manager of SNCF stations and connections. “It will also result in concrete achievements in stations to improve thermal comfort, and the acoustic, visual and other characteristics of stations in France.”

MIT Senseable City Lab was set up in 2004 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to deepen research into ways of thinking about cities, to study and anticipate the evolution of digital technologies in the urban environment, and to understand better the interfaces between technology, citizens and the city.