ALICE Knowledge Platform

Specific Challenge:  Europe's urban areas are struggling to develop themselves into well-connected multimodal and multi-usage nodes for smart and clean mobility. Multiple trends affect urban and inter-urban areas: urban growth, densification, digitalisation, increasing pressure from freight movements and a shift to a service-oriented economy. Moreover, many European cities and regions areas are committed to develop into zero-emission areas that are well connected with the TEN-T network.

New technologies and innovative measures are emerging, but they are not taken up at a scale that is necessary to meet our climate targets and European transport policy objectives. In many instances, the responsible authorities (often operating at different governance levels) cooperate with public and private stakeholders. But the full integration and implementation of new solutions lags behind because little information, data and tested, innovative solutions are available on their effectiveness and on how to overcome the barriers to successful implementation into older legacy systems and ageing infrastructures.

Scope: This topic is divided in 3 sub-topics

The transport sector contributes to about 25% of total CO2 emissions in the EU and is the only sector where the trend is still increasing. Taking into account the growing demand on the road transport system and the ambitious targets of the EC’s Transport White Paper, it is paramount to increase the efficiency of freight transport.
The vision of the AEROFLEX project is to support vehicle manufacturers and the logistics industry to achieve the coming challenges for road transport. The overall objective of the AEROFLEX project is to develop and demonstrate new technologies, concepts and architectures for complete vehicles with optimised aerodynamics, powertrains and safety systems as well as flexible and adaptable loading units with advanced interconnectedness contributing to the vision of a “physical internet”. The optimal matching of novel vehicle concepts and infrastructures is highly important, requiring the definition of smart infrastructure access policies for the next generation of trucks, load carriers and road infrastructure.
The specific technical objectives, main innovations and targeted key results are:
1. Characterise the European freight transport market (map, quantify and predict), the drivers, the constraints, the trends, and the mode and vehicle choice criteria
2. Develop new concepts and technologies for trucks with reduced drag, which are safer, comfortable, configurable and cost effective and ensure satisfaction of intermodal customer needs under varying transport tasks and conditions.
3. Demonstrate potential truck aerodynamics and energy management improvements with associated impact assessments of the new vehicle concepts, technologies and features developed in the AEROFLEX project.
4. Drafting of coherent recommendations for revising standards and legislative frameworks in order to allow the new aerodynamic and flexible vehicle concepts on the road.
To achieve an overall 18-33% efficiency improvement in road transport / long haulage by 2025+.

The main goal of COG-LO is to create the framework and tools that will add cognition and collaboration features to future logistics processes by: 1) Introducing the Cognitive Logistics Object (CLO) by adding cognitive behavior to all involved Logistics actors and processes; 2) Developing the environment that will allow CLOs to exchange information through ad-hoc social secure networks. The main objectives of COG-LO are: (a) Definition of a Future Cognitive Logistics Objects reference implementation model that supports cognitive logistics behaviour; (b) Design and develop the necessary analytics and cognitive tools that enable complex event detection, context awareness and multi-criteria decision support. (c) To design and develop the collaboration platform based on hybrid ad-hoc social networks of CLOs. (d) To design and develop the COG-LO tools (Cognitive Advisor, which realizes the cognitive behavior of CLO based on the reference implementation model, and Tweeting CLOs, allowing CLOs to exchange information in ad-hoc Social IoT networks); (e) To evaluate the COG-LO results via intermodal, cross-country and urban logistics pilot operations. (f) To introduce new business models for ad-hoc collaborations affecting all logistics stakeholders and create a community of Logistics, ICT and urban environment stakeholders.
The consortium is led by SingularLogic and consists of 14 partners from 8 countries.

The EU maritime transport constitutes a crucial link in the global logistic chains and plays a leading role in international freight transport. Serving 40% of the EU’s internal trade and 75% of its external trade, maritime transport is an essential element in supporting Europe in maintaining its Number 1 position in global trade. Therefore, as a key node of the EU’s TEN-T ports have the ultimate objective to fully integrate maritime transport into the global logistics chain.
Within this framework, DocksTheFuture aims at defining the vision for the ports of the future in 2030, covering all specific issues that could define this concept including among others, dredging, emission reduction, energy transition, electrification, smart grids, port-city interface and the use of renewable energy management.
The proposal already addressed a preliminary research on the Port of Future concept, the definition of several Port of the Future topics to be addressed and their related targets in 2030 and a preliminary list of projects that could be potentially clustered together with the RIA retained proposals.
Moving from this point, DockTheFuture will:
- refine and tune the Port of Future concepts, the Port of the Future topics and their related targets in 2030 and the list of projects to be clustered together with the RIA retained proposals,
- identify appropriate KPIs and relevant monitoring and evaluation of results of actions
- leading to the a Port of the Future Road Map for 2030 that will include a number of exploitation elements such as tools for evaluation and transferability of Port of the Future solutions, R&D and policy recommendations, training packages and the creation of a Port of the Future Network of Excellence
All of these elements will be supported by a comprehensive Dissemination and Communication plan targeting all ports in Europe and other relevant stakeholders, including Mediterranean and other Neighbouring Partner Countries.

Big data has opened a wide spectrum of opportunities in the field of transport research. Observing the recent emergent interest in the application of big data within transport, as well as the extended scope of its applications, it is evident that most of the challenges have yet to be addressed.

Leveraging Big Data to Manage Transport Operations (LeMO) project will explore the implications of the utilisation of big data to enhance the economic sustainability and competitiveness of European transport sector. The project will study and analyse big data in the European transport domain in particular with respect to five transport dimensions: mode, sector, technology, policy and evaluation. LeMO will accomplish this by conducting a series of case studies, in order to provide recommendations on the prerequisites of effective big data implementation in the transport field.

Through case studies, LeMO will investigate methodological, technological, governmental and institutional issues, which in turn contribute to evidence-based decision making. LeMO will supplement these case studies with a horizontal analysis that identifies the barriers and limitations of the transportation system to exploit big data opportunities. In collaboration with strong advisory and reference group, and expert stakeholders, LeMO will devise and develop research and policy roadmap that will provide incremental steps necessary towards data openness and sharing to make transport safer, more efficient and more sustainable. Notably, LeMO will bring crucial issues linked to privacy, data security and legal aspects to the forefront, paving the way for future legal framework for the collection and exploitation of big data in transport.

Furthermore, LeMO will disseminate project findings to a large population of stakeholders, including transport authorities and industries leading to better understanding of travellers' and consumers' behaviour, targeted information and identify policy interventions.

Currently most of EU research activities in the area of supply chain has been supported through programmes specifically focusing on some aspects as for example technologies for handling and transportation in ALICE, for internal logistics and production networks in EFFRA, Integrated platforms for implementing new communication paradigms in ICT, platfomrs for industrial symbiosis in SPIRE.
The aim of the project is to put in place a cross-sectoral and cross-technological initiative at European level to increase integration between production and distribution proposing research and innovation priorities for the future of supply chain.
In particular, the project will develop a Strategic Research Agenda where the effort of different communities like EFFRA, SPIRE, ALICE and other ICT are put together to face important challenges like customization and sustainability. Most important steps of the project will be: (i) Creating a European network where most important stakeholders will be involved reaching a critical mass of people from all targeted industries and scientific domains by mean of direct actions along the whole project life; (ii) Identifying future industrial scenarios for 2050: through the analysis of the socio-economic trends and drivers in the market and their impact on innovation & technology development it will be possible to fix some promising scenarios for the future; (iii) Developing a strategic research agenda and a joint action plan on broader innovation policy issues of common interest. NEXT-NET will be grounded on the analysis of most important European and national roadmaps status of implementation, on identification of the most promising enabling technologies for the future industrial scenarios to develop the research and innovation priorities, on workshops (focus groups, brainstorming sessions, ...) with experts and stakeholders from more that 4 supply chains accross Europe.

Ports are a great example of heterogeneous information hubs. Multiple stakeholders operate inside and outside them with different motivations and businesses. Although document and data interchange is already in place through Port Community Systems (PCS), the interchange is limited to official documentation and services of the Port Authority, such as custom declarations, import/export of cargo, and other formal documents. However, an effective integration of operational data is far from optimal in most ports, and especially so in medium or small ports, where budget is limited and IT services usually is outsourced.

In contrast, the available operational data (resources tracking, container status, vessel operations, surface or berth available, air/water quality measurements,...) is constantly increasing and technology is getting inexpensive and widely available. However, the application of such systems is still single-entity centric, since the information is not shared, keeping the real potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 hidden. The same holds for geographic areas surrounding ports, where Smart Cities integrate various data systems and provide valuable services to citizens and authorities.

PIXEL will enable a two-way collaboration of ports, multimodal transport agents and cities for optimal use of internal and external resources, sustainable economic growth and environmental impact mitigation, towards the Ports of the Future. PIXEL will leverage technological enablers to voluntary exchange data among ports and stakeholders, thus ensuring a measurable benefit in this process. The main outcome of this technology will be efficient use of resources in ports, sustainable development and green growth of ports and surrounding cities/regions.

Built on top of the state-of-the art interoperability technologies, PIXEL will centralise data from the different information silos where internal and external stakeholders store their operational information.

SELIS is aimed at delivering a ‘platform for pan-European logistics applications’ by:
- Embracing a wide spectrum of logistics perspectives and creating a unifying operational and strategic business innovation agenda for pan European Green Logistics.
- Establishing an exceptionally strong consortium of logistics stakeholders and ICT providers, that can leverage EU IP from over 40 projects so as to create proof of concept Common Communication and navigation platforms for pan-European logistics applications in month 18 deployed in 8 living labs (LLs) representing the principal logistics communities..
- Establishing a research and innovation environment using the LLs to provide data than can be used for discovery of new insights that will enable continuous value creation supporting the large scale adoption of SELIS.

The proposed Shared European Logistics Intelligent Information Space, SELIS, is a network of logistic communities’ specific shared intelligent information spaces termed SELIS Community Nodes (SCN). SCNs are constructed by individual logistics communities to facilitate the next generation of collaborative, responsive and agile green transportation chains. SCNs link with their participants’ existing systems through a secure infrastructure and provide shared information and tools for data acquisition and use, according to a 'cooperation agreement'. Connected nodes, provide a distributed common communication and navigation platform for Pan European logistics applications. Each Node decides what information wishes to publish and what information wants to subscribe to.

The SELIS Community Node (SCN) concept represents the evolution of a longline of research in this area. The fundamental principle is that it provides a ‘lightweight ICT structure’ to enable information sharing for collaborative sustainable logistics for all at strategic and operational levels.