Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website moovel lab visualizes mobility infrastructures on land and in the air with the design project ‘Flights to Rome’
july 04, 2018 - Daimler

moovel lab visualizes mobility infrastructures on land and in the air with the design project ‘Flights to Rome’


  • Visualization of mobility infrastructure on land and in the air
  • Globally connected mobility network via the road and air
  • Successor to the multiple-award-winning ‘Roads to Rome’ design project 

Stuttgart, June 27, 2018. The #moovellab, an interdisciplinary team of the moovel Group, has published its new project ‘Flights to Rome’. For the first time ever, the entire global mobility network comprising air and road infrastructure is displayed in a single image, the ‘Flights to Rome’ data visualization. 

Do all roads lead to Rome? This question inspired the #moovellab team and underpins its ‘Roads to Rome’ project (roadstorome.moovellab.com, December 2015) and ‘ Flights to Rome’ successor project (flightstorome.moovellab.com). While ‘Roads to Rome’ traces land arteries, ‘Flights to Rome’ integrates the third dimension: mobility in the sky. 

The team combined OpenStreetMap data with the worldwide flight network to visualize the global road and air traffic mobility network. The #moovellab team used this data as the basis for a worldwide intermodal routing graph in order to realistically calculate the fastest combined air and road route. The result is a visualization that, for the first time, shows the journey from A to Rome across the entire planet. 

“A closer look at the saying ‘All roads lead to Rome’ reveals an interesting mobility proposition that simply begs engagement on a very large scale,” says Benedikt Gross, Design Director at the #moovellab. “With ‘Flights to Rome’ it was possible for the first time to link roads and the flight network intermodally.” 

The varied contouring of the arteries is based on a complex algorithm, which takes into account 712,425 starting points with Rome as destination, and 3,573,863 flights. The team also researched Tokyo and New York as destinations. The road data are based on OpenStreetMap (OSM). Similar to the Wikipedia principle, anyone can create and edit map contents in OSM. The flight network is based on flight movements recorded from January 9 to 15, 2017, by the Swedish company Flightradar24. 

Roads to Rome won the German Design Award Special 2017 and the Kantar – Information is Beautiful Award 2016. 

About the moovel lab 

The #moovellab is an interdisciplinary four-person team that uses innovative projects to look at questions relating to the future of mobility and human behavior in urban areas. In doing so, the #moovellab supplies vital input for discourse. 

Further information is available online:

www.moovel-group.com www.moovellab.com