Towards Innovative Freight and Logistics

By Uwe Clausen

Freight transport faces a dual challenge: it must satisfy the demands of globalized trade and meet environmental requirements. In this context, innovation is a crucial topic to enable the transition from the current transportation and logistics system to a sustainable system.

This book provides an overview of the latest technological innovations in Europe and worldwide, based on ICT and new vehicle concepts, for all modes and all scales (urban, regional, national or international).

The authors consider innovation supply, the process of innovation and innovative business models. Some perspectives and solutions are proposed on the deployment of innovation, specifically concerning the transformation of the organization of the system and the relationships between industry, governmental players, operators and users.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Jun 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781119307778

Book preview

Preface

The transport sector is very much concerned about environmental adaptation and mitigation issues. Most of these are related to the objective of curbing GHG emission by 20% by 2020, alternative energy and energy savings, sustainable mobility and infrastructures, safety and security, etc. These objectives require the implementation of advanced research works, to develop new policies, and to adjust education and industrial innovations.

The theme and slogan of the Transport Research Arena held in Paris (TRA2014) were respectively: Transport Solutions: From Research to Deployment and Innovate Mobility, Mobilise Innovation. Top researchers and engineers, as well as private and public policy and decision-makers, were mobilized to identify and take the relevant steps to implement innovative solutions in transport. All surface modes were included, including walking and cycling, as well as cross modal aspects.

Policies, technologies and behaviors must be continually adapted to new constraints, such as climate change, the diminishing supply of fossil fuels, the economic crisis, the increased demand for mobility, safety and security, i.e. all the societal issues of the 21st Century. Transport infrastructures and materials, modal share, co-modality, urban planning, public transportation and mobility, safety and security, freight, logistics, ITS, energy and environment issues are the subject of extensive studies, research works and industrial innovations that are reported in this series of books.

This book is part of a set of six volumes called the Research for Innovative Transports set. This collection presents an update of the latest academic and applied research, case studies, best practices and user perspectives on transport carried out in Europe and worldwide. The presentations made during TRA2014 reflect on them. The TRAs are supported by the European Commission (DG-MOVE and DG-RTD), the Conference of European Road Directors (CEDR), and the modal European platforms, ERRAC (rail), ERTRAC (road), WATERBORNE, and ALICE (freight), and also by the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP) and the European Transport Research Alliance (ETRA).

The volumes are made up of a selection of the best papers presented at TRA2014. All papers were peer reviewed before being accepted at the conference, and were then selected by the editors for the purpose of the present collection. Each volume contains complementary academic and applied inputs provided by highly qualified researchers, experts and professionals from all around the world.

Each volume of the series covers a strategic theme of TRA2014.

Volume 1, Energy and Environment, presents recent research works around the triptych transports, energy and environment that demonstrate that vehicle technologies and fuels can still improve, but it is necessary to prepare their implementation (electro-mobility), think about new services and involve enterprises. Mitigation strategies and policies are examined under different prospective scenarios, to develop and promote alternative fuels and technologies, multi-modality and services, and optimized transport chains whilst preserving climate and the environment. Evaluation and certification methodologies are key elements for assessing air pollution, noise and vibration from road, rail and maritime transports and their impacts on the environment. Different depollution technologies and mitigation strategies are also presented.

Volume 2, Towards Innovative Freight and Logistics, analyzes how to optimize freight movements and logistics, introduces new vehicle concepts, points out the governance and organization issues, and proposes an assessment framework.

Volumes 3 and 4 are complementary books covering the topic of traffic management and safety.

Volume 3, Traffic Management, starts with a survey of data collection processes and policies and then shows how traffic modeling and simulation may resolve major problems. Traffic management, monitoring and routing tools and experience are reported and the role of traffic information is highlighted. Impact assessments are presented.

Volume 4, Traffic Safety, describes the main road safety policies, accident analysis and modeling. Special focus is placed on the safety of vulnerable road users. The roles of infrastructure and ITS on safety are analyzed. Finally railway safety is focused upon.

Volume 5, Materials and Infrastructures, is split into two sub-volumes, investigating geotechnical issues, and pavement materials’ characterization, innovative materials, technologies and processes, and introducing new techniques and approaches for auscultation and monitoring. Solutions to increase the durability of infrastructures and to improve maintenance and repair are shown, for recycling as well as for ensuring the sustainability of the infrastructures. Specific railways and inland navigation issues are addressed. A focus is put on climate resilient roads.

Volume 6, Urban Mobility and Public Transport, highlights possible innovations in order to improve transports and the quality of life in urban areas. Buses and two-wheelers could be a viable alternative in cities if they are safe and reliable. New methodologies are needed to assess urban mobility through new survey protocols, a better knowledge of user behavior or taking into account the value of travel for public transport. The interactions between urban transport and land planning are a key issue. However, these interactions have to be better assessed in order to propose scenarios for new policies.

Bernard JACOB, Chair of the TRA2014 Programme Committee

Jean-Bernard KOVARIK, Chair of the TRA2014 Management Committee March 2016

Introduction

Freight transport faces a dual challenge. It must satisfy the demands of globalized trade on the one hand and meet environmental requirements on the other. In this context, innovation is a crucial topic to enable the transition of the current transportation and logistics system into a sustainable one. This volume provides an overview of the latest technological innovations all over Europe with additionally some international examples, based on ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) or new vehicle concepts, for all modes and all scales (urban, regional, national or International).

Innovation is a key factor of economic and social evolution. In the European Union, innovations are on the political agenda to transform the current transport system into a sustainable transport system. Transport has the potential to become one of the most innovative industrial sectors in Europe. Research and development in freight transport have a high priority in both Europe and North America, because of its importance for the economy, employment, and European integration. The competitiveness of enterprises and countries, and business as a whole greatly depend on freight transport efficiency. In addition, innovations help in coping with the challenges of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fossil energy consumption.

Research and innovation support any sustainable transport policy, are necessary to meet the objectives of the European white paper of 2011, and allow the emergence and deployment of technical solutions for the transition of the current transportation system into a sustainable transportation system. Nevertheless, innovation in the field of transport creates a great paradox: nearly a quarter of European private research is dedicated to the transport sector; ten of the twenty companies with the largest research budgets in Europe belong to this sector with a performance among the most innovative in Europe – and yet transport is not, as with nano-technology, micro-electronics and biotechnology, associated with an image of advanced technologies, innovation and high creativity. One of the reasons for this is that transport is only understood as an integrator of external technologies, whether specific or generic.

This volume highlights how innovative the transport sector is. Telematics, safe logistics systems and new vehicle and transport concepts, including electric mobility, are among the topics investigated and the research works presented during the Transport Research Arena (TRA) 2014, and described in this volume. It shows the specificity of innovation in the field of transport, as the ability of a concept, a composition, or the Engineering to control a complex system.

However, despite the achievements in the implementation of innovation policies, environmental issues remain a consequence of transportation activities. This requires more radical innovations and technological leaps. This volume shows the way to promote the diffusion of radical innovation in the goods transportation system. One conclusion is that radical innovations spread through changes in the organization of the system.

That is why technological and infrastructural innovations are necessary, but not sufficient for achieving efficient logistics and transport chains. Non-technological innovation, i.e. innovative supply chains, processes and business models are also addressed in this volume. The deployment of innovative solutions requires a change in the transport system organization and in the relationships between industrial and governmental players, regulators, operators, users and customers. These aspects are also analyzed here.

The target audience of this volume is researchers, as well as practitioners, industrialists and decision-makers. For researchers, the volume gives an up-to-date picture of the latest innovations in the field of transport. For practitioners and industrialists, the volume highlights the importance of considering innovations as part of a social system, taking account of the possibilities of adoption by the social system of transport. For decision-makers, it provides recommendations to promote innovation and its diffusion.

This volume first presents the potential of technological innovations in freight traffic management, information systems and vehicles, then moves on to address stakeholders’ governance issues and innovation assessment.

I.1. Optimization of freight and logistics

Mastery of information, allowed by the latest management systems, is the basis of the development of co-modality, i.e. using each transport mode as efficiently and economically as possible throughout the whole transport system. Logistics supply chains cross from mode to mode. Advanced information and communication technologies contribute towards co-modality by improving infrastructure, traffic and fleet management and facilitating a better tracking and tracing of goods across the global transport networks.

Achieving such mastery is the aim of intelligent freight, as it involves ICTs in infrastructures and vehicles. For logistics and transportation companies, a proper integration of ICTs is the key to innovate and supply a whole new range of services. However, ICT adoption remains uneven: smaller businesses tend to focus mainly on transportation operations and only occasionally integrate information management, while larger operators tend to neglect physical transportation in order to focus more on coordination, organization and service management; as such, they are more likely to adopt the tools and methods of intelligent freight.

The European white paper describes freight in a hub and spoke model which distinguishes between the last mile and city logistics and long haul freight (above 300 km), with the short haul between both. Among the targets, cities should only use clean vehicles (no or very low emissions and non-fossil energy), and a 50% modal shift to rail/sea/waterborne transport is required for freight above 300 km. These ambitious targets require more dedicated research exploiting the potential for disruptive innovations. Improving quality and reliability of rail/sea/waterborne networks and optimized information flow for smooth transition between modes will be crucial. ITS solutions dedicated to urban freight are potentially very numerous, but so far have not been used in many cities. Among the most eagerly anticipated solutions are: real-time traffic information focused on truck drivers, online reservation of loading/unloading areas, and systems for consolidating urban deliveries.

This raises a variety of challenges to support mobility for growth, notably enhancing safety and reducing transport’s dependency on fossil fuels, whilst promoting co-modal logistics services that deliver attractive solutions improving the efficiency and resilience of supply chains, and allowing more sustainable choices to shippers, operators and pro-active receivers of goods.

This part defines concepts such as smart corridors connecting smart hubs, and the implementation conditions of management systems for long distance road transport as well as for rail transport. It also highlights specificities for the use of ITS in urban freight, with route and delivery area booking issues.

I.2. New vehicle concepts

New concepts of vehicles could provide innovative solutions in order to optimize energy consumption and efficiency. Avoiding unnecessary trips may also reduce energy consumption.

The potential benefit of using higher capacity vehicles is investigated in several Northern European countries, as well as in other regions of the world, with major productivity gains expected. Higher capacity vehicles may improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions by reducing the vehicle-kilometers travelled for the same mass or volume (payload) mileage. Introducing these higher capacity vehicles would require some regulation adaptations.

Besides vehicles themselves, other options are proposed concerning their operation. Platooning, i.e. forming trains of heavy vehicles at short or very short distances, may reduce the aerodynamic effects and drag forces and therefore increase fuel efficiency up to 5 to 7%, as well as lane capacity. Eco-driving strategies comprising fuel consumption and safety are quite efficient to reduce energy consumption up to 10%. In a limited budgetary context, solutions which do not require changing the existing infrastructure or building new infrastructure are of high interest. Another challenge consists of optimizing maintenance.

Innovation not only concerns road transport, but modal shift is also dependent on innovations of non-road vehicles. Inland navigation is an efficient, safe and environmentally-friendly mode of transport. Performing technologies usually result in higher logistics efficiency and lower operating costs. These can be achieved by targeted fleet innovations, e.g. vessel design, further automation, including ICT, which are described here.

The interdependency between vehicles’ innovations, improved logistics solutions, transhipment, training and governance is highlighted.

I.3. Governance and organizational issues

The freight transport system is considered as a socio-technical system, referring to the interactions between stakeholders, technologies and infrastructure. Socio-technical systems consist of a cluster of elements, including technology, regulation, user practices and markets, cultural meaning, infrastructure, maintenance networks and supply networks.

In this framework, smart and integrated freight transport results from the joint optimization of the social and technical factors. Thus, optimization of each aspect alone (socio or technical) tends to decrease the system’s performance. Therefore, research should be conducted to design the social system and the technical system together. The transitions from one socio-technical system to another should also be considered, as well as the systems’ resilience, in the context of economic crisis and climate changes.

A focus on the governance issue is made. The operation and governance of the maritime and inland/coastal ports, as well as airports, rail terminals or corridors have a major effect on the logistics artery that supports mobility for growth. Successful and well-functioning freight movements require a network of efficient and environmentally-friendly hubs to serve rail, road, short sea and inland waterway freight services.

Financial viability of proposed solutions has also to be addressed and an understanding of the requirements for profitable operations is needed to study the potential for further roll-out of promising solutions. Business models and supportive measures should be analyzed.

This part proposes to support stakeholders’ governance including guidance for elaborating new governance schemes for sustainable logistics and transport, stakeholders training and coaching for being engaged in win-win flexible cooperation. At the urban level, it provides evaluation of incentive schemes’ applicability and the development of sustainable city logistics dashboards for supporting decision-making and achievement of long lasting effects.

I.4. Assessment framework and future steps

Regarding innovation, Theys¹ indicates that the available information on its cost, impact, potential market, difficulties in introduction… is, without exception, very fragmentary.

The understanding of impacts of ICT for innovative and efficient solutions is crucial and assessed in this part: how could these innovations promote new service concepts? How could these innovations promote radical changes in freight transport chains?

Besides innovation, socio-economic assessment is an important issue for freight transport projects and policies. Transport policy and planning decisions often have significant economic development. Some of these impacts are widely recognized and considered in conventional policy and planning analysis, but others are often overlooked or undervalued. Many technological projects do not focus enough on the business models. Assessment is therefore critical to select the most efficient project or policy.

Sustainability requires a holistic approach to integrate new dimensions into the assessment process. This part provides elements and methods to evaluate projects as well as policies, on different levels (urban, national or European), considering their economic, environmental and social impacts. This is an important step in the decision-making process.

Furthermore, the conclusions highlight the green transport and logistics core role on the industry competitiveness. It is well known that freight is an important part of the transportation sector, and the transportation sector is in itself a major component of our economy. We demonstrate in this part that conciliating economic efficiency and environmental performance is thus possible. As these issues are closely linked to those of pricing, we also provide new elements on the internalization of external costs.

The assessment process also needs data, harmonized at the international scale. The freight transport system is changing and heterogeneous, due to the rise of new trends such as e-commerce, but also due to the importance of urban freight. A contribution on the relevant data needed is also included in this part.

Europe’s freight transport system has much room for improvement. Today’s main policy challenges for the European Union are to improve the functioning of the transport system. This book provides a holistic view of the transport system, considering different innovation fields: traffic management and information systems, new vehicles, but also new stakeholders’ governance. It provides the latest innovative results for all modes at various scales, without forgetting the difficult issue of their business models. The deployment of innovation requires a change in the organization of the system and the relationships between industry, state players, operators and users, that is studied and supported here.

¹ THEYS J., Quelles technologies clefs pour l’Europe? Les enjeux liés au transport, Rapport pour la DG recherche de la Commission Européenne, 2005.

Introduction written by Corinne BLANQUART, Uwe CLAUSEN and Bernard JACOB.

PART 1

Optimization of Freight and Logistics

1

Smart Logistics Corridors and the Benefits of Intelligent Transport Systems

Increasing globalization, competitiveness and customer demands have led to the need for the development of smart and seamless corridors connecting industrial clusters. Connectivity to achieve higher levels of resilience, responsiveness and service provisioning are needed in addition to solid and advanced information sharing. Intelligent transport system (ITS) can play a major role in this supporting concepts such as synchromodality, cross-chain control centers and single windows. Important breakthroughs can be achieved by combining existing technologies and know-how in the context of a shared vision about the future of logistics and the role technology will play. As most transport of goods take place between logistics hubs or clusters the concept of smart corridors connecting smart hubs can be used to define applications that will add value to individual companies by introducing extended connectivity and information sharing. This chapter will detail the concepts of smart corridors, what they are, what they encompass and what the opportunities for the short-term of ITS for the logistics industry will be.

1.1. Introduction

Logistics is a cross-sectorial activity impacting the entire supply chain from the producers and manufacturers to the end-customers. For this reason, logistics needs to be seen not only in the limited sense of goods transport and warehousing where it is a key determinant of business success at the micro-level but also in the wider context of the complex macro-economic role it plays in helping deliver a competitive industrial base. Usually, the broad logistics industry evolves in hubs, which are geographical clusters of logistics activities. They are characterized by high transport service levels and low transport costs. Freight moves along international and national trade routes via hubs, and such movements enable the efficient flow of goods worldwide. This leads to the need for the development of smart and seamless corridors connecting industrial or logistics clusters by solid, safe and secure infrastructures, real-time connectivity and information sharing, reduction of administrative burdens and enhanced intelligent control for resilient and flexible service provisioning. All this in order to cope with the increasing demands from end-users and customers for on-time, reliable, fast, sustainable but foremost low cost delivery. To achieve all this collaboration and joint efforts are needed to make most effective use of available knowledge, technology and operational enforcement.

Information and communication technology (ICT) can have a major impact on coping with the growing complexity of logistics and its importance as a major economic activity in Europe, especially by improving the supply chain visibility, responsiveness and efficiency. These benefits of ITSs can be realized on the level of the individual transport mode, such as eco-driving or truck platooning, and on the level of the transport within and across supply chains, such as coordinated planning and advanced and adaptive slot management. For the latter, there is a need for activities aiming at facilitating the implementation of information platforms, suitable for all stakeholders for bundling and consolidation purposes, as well as development of the single window and one-stop administrative shop concepts supporting e-freight. Finally, there is a need for service provisioning in the area of tracking and tracing (dGPS and geofencing) supporting developments such as slot and yield management.

In the past 10–15 years ITS has developed and advanced tremendously and opportunities lie in the fact that for several ITS systems freight transport has become a pioneer market due to its smaller size and more consolidated organization and ownership.

To capture the short- and middle-term opportunities and to put them into perspective, we will describe in more detail the challenges of the logistic sector, technological developments and its fit with the logistics domain and its challenges, new logistic concepts that will benefit from ITS and how both of them can be put into practice by mapping them on the smart transport corridor concept.

1.2. Challenges: past, present and future

Transport companies and logistics service providers are quite often part of a complex network of supplier or contractor relationships. Independent of this complexity, due to the fragmentized sector with a majority of medium-sized and small companies, most companies still merely compete on costs, which in the more traditional supplier–shipper relationship was a manageable strategy. Nowadays, we see several trends that translate into an increasingly complex business environment. Globalization and longer and more complex supply chains, increasing customer demands with respect to shorter lead times, high reliability and reduced prices, demand for sustainable solutions and increasing compliance requirements in the field of safety, security and environment can be seen as important developments that require new strategies for the logistics industry.

One of the main challenges for the present and in line with the above conclusions is to become more responsive and resilient while keeping costs at an acceptable level [OON 13a]. Responsive in order to cope with increasing customer demands in terms of lead times, price levels and flexibility but at the same time responsive to be able to optimize the various activities concerned with the transport of goods with respect to fuel efficiency, use of available transport capacity and operating costs. Resilient in order to cope with unexpected disturbances aimed at maintaining the primary functions. This means that two apparently contradicting requirements should be fulfilled: on the one hand, giving more time to the supply chain operations to adapt and to be able to maximize the opportunities of bundling and cooperation and, on the other hand, reducing operational costs in order to keep up with the increasing competitiveness. Often this is referred to as being lean and agile at the same time. The misunderstanding though is that for every business or supply chain lean nor agility as a whole is the solution. Companies or networks of companies should be very careful in determining where they can be lean and where they should be agile. This requires subsequently transparency, intelligence and finally intelligent cooperation based on data and information.

The future will involve constantly adapting synchronized multi-modal transport corridors, connecting industrial and/or logistics hubs thus strengthening the economic importance of the sector on a global scale. The challenge is to identify options for flexibility in time, place and choice of mode by bundling, temporizing goods, smart repositioning and at the same time solving administrative and contractual limitations for these options (new kinds of SLAs, transparency and interoperability). ITS and ICT are major solutions to facilitate increased information exchange among the actors in the logistics sector, similar to the cooperative systems approach in the ITS domain. Connectivity and information sharing will enable companies to better predict and develop operational strategies for the future and increased options for capitalizing efficiency and sustainability gains.

1.3. State of the art

The developments in the area of ITSs, especially short-range dedicated communication protocols (DSRC), cooperative systems connecting infrastructure-based systems with transport modes and all the technologies used for state estimation, situational awareness and automated control have the potential to shape the future of multimodal logistics. This future landscape consists of concepts now being developed such as synchromodality, cross-chain control centers, autonomous controlled transport vehicles and other highly automated transport systems, ultimately leading to self-organizing logistics [HÜL 07]. All these concepts require advanced information systems needed for adaptive control in complex situations.

Within the present logistic supply chains, various forms of ITSs are being used, varying from advanced planning software packages for multi-modal transport planning and port and terminal operations to automated and digitalized solutions for customs clearance, declarations and other compliance issues. Some front-runners have full visibility over their fleet and operations, using fleet management and floating transport data in order to enhance eco-efficient driving and optimize the operations they control. Furthermore, geofencing is slowly gaining ground to optimize the operations at terminals, transport hubs or cross-docking facilities making the handling as seamless as possible and thereby reducing waiting times, increasing safety and security and unnecessary transport movements. Initiatives by MARS and Heinz to organize the Dutch championship speed docking, challenges shippers and transport companies to use advanced technologies in daily operations aimed at reducing the time spent at distribution centers with the ultimate price to be crowned speed docking champion. These often solitary and fragmented initiatives and developments require a more tangible context and future perspective. Although logistics traditionally tends to concentrate activities in agglomerates of companies due to the physical component of transport, ITS and safe and secure information systems might enable optimized cooperation in a more virtual way, such as the concept of a virtual common transport terminal.

Administrative innovations have also had an important impact on the logistics industry. Arguably the most influential has been just-in-time deliveries. However, many other administrative innovations such as new forms of collaboration with customers, suppliers and even competitors are shaping the industry. An example of this is the use of shared services such as warehousing, transport and consolidation, which is helping groups of logistics companies to use their resources more effectively. Another form of administrative innovation lies in the field of smart trade facilitation. Especially in the opportunity of reducing costs of compliance by smart data sharing between global hubs for customs purposes or other regulatory affairs.

Nevertheless, all technological developments and commercially available means of tracking, tracing and safe and secure identification are not yet integrated and connected. For both the mobility area and the logistics domain, the need to make intelligent systems connected will be the most difficult challenge. In the next section, we will show the need for connectivity for new logistic concepts that are developing quickly.

1.4. New logistics concepts

One of the new perspectives in connected society is synchromodality. Synchromodality as a concept was first introduced roughly 3 years ago in the Netherlands by Professor Jan Fransoo and was quickly adopted by the academia, RTOs and industry front-runners such as Ett Coil Till. A first study was performed to define a common roadmap with all stakeholders on this topic [OON 11] and soon this topic became one of the main pillars of the Dutch economic top sector on logistics, launched in 2012. From 2012 onward, the concept has also been adopted internationally. From this first study, we learn that synchromodality can be seen as the next step after co-modality and inter-modality and means the cooperation within and between supply chains, transport chains and infrastructures aimed at using the right mode of transport at all times. This concept requires shippers to book their transport independent of the modality of use in order to create a pseudo-modality. This is modality on the meta level consisting of all applicable modalities that can be used including a cost function that determines the trade-off for a certain modal split at different times and circumstances. Within this pseudo-modality, it is the challenge to capture as much of the potential as possible by increasing the intelligence on alternatives and options for flexibility and responsiveness. For individual companies, this means that we search for more planning and allocation flexibility and information to support decision making under complex and often uncertain circumstances. Closely related to this topic is the development of virtual control towers [VAN 12] not only to control transport from a designated logistics hub or area for normal supplies but also for service logistics and especially in the combination of the two. Flexible decoupling and coupling of supply and demand by controlling large volumes of cargo from various shippers can deliver huge shared benefits in the area of reduced cash out expenditures. New solution providers might emerge that only control and manage these virtual systems based on proven technologies from the world of ICT. In the past year, several first pilots with synchromodal control towers were developed and tested in practice in the Netherlands with LSPs like Seacon Logistics and inland terminals such as Container Terminal Utrecht. Now we have to find ways to develop harmonized concepts that can be easily used and scaled.

At the same time, administrative and regulatory burdens and barriers for increasing the responsiveness of the industry should also be addressed. Quick wins can be found in redefining service level agreements and contracts, which now sometimes narrow down the options for creativity. Important to mention in this respect is that synchromodality does not mean modal shift to barge and/or railways and includes addition to vertical collaboration as proposed by Paganelli [PAG 13] as horizontal collaboration and the opportunities of horizontal collaboration such as bundling.

In order to achieve a next level of synchromodality, control towers and enhanced intelligence, the logistics sector has to acknowledge that by combining existing close-to-market technology and know-how an important breakthrough can be achieved in the area of ICT and ITS, which encompasses benefits for the individual companies as well as the whole sector. Technology therefore is a key enabler through which coordination is achieved. Projects like the EU-funded iCargo¹ project and the WINN project² will help to establish a common ICT architecture to enable the development of new services and connected supply chains.

1.5. Using corridors as our playing field

For the transport of goods, the transport will take place in networks of supply chains. Within these networks, we can distinguish cross-border corridors. In Europe, there is a clear focus on the TEN-T program on international corridors and there are already so-called smart corridors being developed among others in Canada³. Interestingly, within the TEN-T program the new requirements on connecting the TEN-T corridors with the urban areas and the need to address multi-modal transport broadens the scope and aligns the transport policy domain much better with the industry focus on networks of supply chains not limited to the TEN-T network⁴. The question is: What is a corridor and especially from an ITS perspective what is an intelligent or smart corridor?. In addition, how does it help to achieve the challenges such as zero-emissions city transport, low-carbon freight transport and sustainable competitiveness?

Intelligence means adding a distinctive mental capacity and/or understanding. ITS in this means then for the logistics sector the ability of the transport systems used to think and act as humans. When we add smart to this, we rule out human intervention and use automation and systems to do the right thing in complex situations. From various dictionaries, we can find that a smart corridor is defined as a well-travelled route used by cars, trains, boats or planes, operated with a minimum of human intervention, using automatic control aimed at doing the right thing in a wide variety of complicated circumstances. A corridor includes infrastructure components essential to the transportation networks, which facilitate international trade and support domestic flows [CRO 11]. The primary objective of a smart corridor is to support a sustainable, secure and efficient multimodal transportation system by applying new and emerging technologies to improve operational efficiency and to share information among systems to achieve benefits of coordinated operations⁵.

From this definition, several questions might arise as follows:

– how does a corridor related to its origin and destination? What about the connecting smart hubs or smart cities?

– is there a difference between a smart corridor and smart use and how does that influence our focus and developments?

Figure 1.1. Illustration of smart corridor concept. For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/jacob/freight.zip

1.5.1. Smart corridors and smart hubs

For the first question, it is apparent that for a smart corridor ending at an ill-managed hub or city or vice versa, the effect and impact of adding intelligence to the corridor is very limited. Especially for the logistics sector, this is an issue where on-trip alternatives are lacking and the impact of delays in terms of customer satisfaction, costs and inefficiencies due to build-in slack is much more severe than in the area of mobility of people. In other words, smart corridors need to connect smart hubs and they need to do this for all the transport modes available between the hubs. Only then, we can make the transition toward synchromodal transport.

For the latter question, we can take a well-known ITS application as a use case: platooning. Truck platooning has been proved to be technical feasible among others by the SARTRE project [CHA 12] but basically platooning has been developed, tested and evaluated since the 1970. At present, we require a facilitating infrastructure to apply platooning in real life: we need information about other non-intelligent vehicles and their behavior, we need some kind of communication infrastructure, we need to know what the origins and destinations of the participating trucks are, etc. So, in this perspective platooning is more smart use than part of the smart corridor concept. Facilitating highly automated vehicles or trucks is then part of the smart corridor concept.

From this, we can say that a smart corridor is all about goods being transported, about traffic and transport management, about monitoring and control aimed at bundling, slot management, dynamic planning and fleet management. Smart use then is all about modalities, about smart transport and about monitoring and control aimed at support and control of the transport itself such as advanced driver assistance systems, platooning, driving behavior and green driving support.

In traditional ITS most of the applications and development are focused on on-trip advise, warning or control. Even within the new developments of road–vehicle automation where the traditional inform–warn–intervene framework is no longer applicable, and we will see more flexible and adaptive use of different levels of automation, the functions are all to support the operator of the transport mode. Although facilitating smart use of corridors during the trip by ITS, especially advanced traffic and transport management and in-car applications, is valuable for the logistics sector, achieving connectivity between smart hubs in and between corridors will have more impact. This is due to the fact that pre-trip intelligence will enhance better decision making when allocating cargo volumes to different modalities, time, location and customer requirements. For example, small-scale collaboration between logistics service providers and shippers can prevent empty container transports back to depot. Any trip prevented to go on the road will contribute to the transport system. The same small-scale collaboration might help SMEs in making modal shift economically feasible by bundling of volumes for barge or rail. After these first steps in the field of ITS, the addition of information on queue length at terminals, alternatives in case of severe incidents (such as low tide on inland waterways) will only help companies to use available data and information for more effective, responsive and adaptive transport in their supply chain networks, resulting in more sustainable transport, competitiveness and innovative climate. At present though, companies lack sufficient information to be or become responsive although the data are there only not connected in a suitable way for individual companies to do some cherry picking for what they need for their own operations.

The latter is important because any uptake of more ICT and ITS in logistics will be driven by business cases at the company level. The step afterward will be to create small alliances to capture more of the potential of sharing data and operations, thus also enhancing the value and need for wider expansion of information solutions in connecting networks or between corridors.

1.5.2. Needs for research and development

How do the above conclusions translate into needs for research and development? As stated previously, the logistics domain will most likely automatically benefit from the transport mode focused ITS developments such as increased vehicle automation (platooning and energy efficient intersection control). On the other hand, the benefits of ITS in the field of pre-trip optimization of transport in networks (i.e. transport management) could be even bigger. In addition to the research and development needs for automation, the main topics for transport management are as follows:

– Data and information management:

- how can we integrate (real-time) data for different transport modes and from various sources into one ICT operating environment that includes a semantic model sufficiently flexible to accommodate adding new data sources?

- what is the structure for data governance in order to combine privately owned and privacy sensitive data from different organizations?

- how can we add intelligence by making use of available algorithms and models for better control?

- how can we assure high-quality information provisioning by real-time data auditing.

– Transport management:

- what are practical solutions for second screen or mirror-link functionality between decision support applications and integrated business applications (SAP, APS, WMS/TMS)?

- how can we harmonize design principles for plug and play 4C’s (cross-chain control centers) in order to support the development of interoperable solutions?

– Development and deployment:

- what are new business models to support advanced uptake of ITS in the logistics domain?

- what are the validation and assessment requirements?

– Cooperation and organizational development:

- how can we develop and implement robust systems for gain sharing in different alliances?

- what are the social consequences of more cooperation and integration?

- how can we use simulation and gaming to show ex ante impact of different scenario’s or logistic innovations [KAT 13]?

Quite a lot of technological solutions are already available, especially in the area of safe and secure data storage, segmentation and provisioning. Interoperability issues and network connectivity topics have been researched for decades. Nevertheless, the importance of the abovementioned research topics is a recurring issue of trust and a subjective feeling of competitive risk that makes companies reluctant to share data and information in networks of supply chains. Due to the relative lack of integrated automation in the