July 2024 – Green-Log

GREEN-LOG at the IATBR International Conference on Travel Behavior

GREEN-LOG visual for IATBR Conference attendance

GREEN-LOG was excited to participate in the Workshop “EU Living Labs for Co-designing Innovative Transport and Logistics Solutions to Address Climate Change. Insights from 7 EU-Funded Projects” at IATBR International Conference on Travel Behavior in Vienna.

The workshop, that was organised by the University of the Aegean and TRANSDEM Lab, took place on July 16, 2024, aimed to explore real-world testing grounds for innovative solutions to fight climate change in EU’s transportation and logistics.

During this workshop, we proudly presented two groundbreaking GREEN-LOG Living Labs for sustainable transport innovation:

GREEN-LOG: LL Ispra – Presented by our partner Athena Tsirimpa, explored the future of last-mile delivery through the integration of cutting-edge delivery robots. The presentation showcased how these advanced technologies are poised to revolutionise logistics, and sparked enthusiastic discussions about challenges and barriers. We delved into potential solutions and future opportunities for expanding these innovations.
GREEN-LOG: LL Athens – Presented by our partner Panagiota Mavrogenidou, focused on the development of multi-stakeholder collaborations for shared Microconsolidation Centers, made possible through the seamless collaboration of DAEM, ACS Courier and Postal Services, and FedEx. The presentation detailed the creation of a microconsolidation center and the introduction of a mobile depot in Athens. We explored how these initiatives could transform urban logistics, addressing barriers and examining how customer behavior might shift due to the introduction of the mobile depot.

Find more about the conference: https://iatbr2024.univie.ac.at/home/

Immerse yourself in GREEN-LOG – Our vision for Urban Logistics

As e-commerce continues to boom, urban areas face significant challenges in managing efficient and sustainable logistics. The Horizon Europe co-funded GREEN-LOG project has released an engaging introductory video highlighting our innovative solutions designed to transform last-mile delivery systems.

The GREEN-LOG project is advancing the development of Logistics-as-a-Service (LaaS) platforms. These platforms facilitate interconnected city logistics, incorporating several forward-thinking components.

The video showcases GREEN-LOG’s cutting-edge approaches, including autonomous vehicles, delivery droids, cargo bike-based micro-consolidation, and multimodal parcel deliveries integrated with public transportation. These solutions are being tested in five European urban Living Labs, each addressing unique logistical challenges in regions like Athens, Barcelona, Flanders, Oxfordshire, and Ispra.

Watch the video below to see how GREEN-LOG is opening the way towards zero-emission, efficient, and socially responsible urban logistics.

Local shops, sustainable drops in Leuven (BE)

Empowering local businesses

Author: Marij Lambert / Stad Leuven

When screening sustainable urban logistics solutions and applications, the city of Leuven is constantly seeking for the added value – efficiency – for their local businesses. Promoting local shopping is promoting sustainable dropping and vice versa. So yes, city logistics should focus on safety and clean air, but what if these local SME’s, often micro-entrepreneurs or small enterprises, were to disappear because the solutions don’t fit their needs?

To avoid this doomsday situation, Leuven has defined a framework for a lively and smart city, in which sustainable city logistics can be organised while empowering its local businesses. The framework is based on three smart principles: smart governance, smart stakeholders and – as an enabler or booster for the first two principles – smart data and technology. Recent examples of this integrated approach cover projects on Urban Vehicle Access Control (e.g. TOKEN) and logistic planning tools (e.g. FlexCURB). Focusing on the first mile, the popular local distribution platform “we.deliver” was launched in Leuven in 2022, to centrally organise pick-ups from 100 local web-shops. The platform consolidates first mile flows in the city, and e-commerce parcels are delivered zero emission with LEV’s or cargo bikes. By adding the GREEN-LOG Logistics-as-a-Service (LaaS) solution to the portfolio, Leuven is taking the learnings from we.deliver to a next level.

We.deliver next generation: a multi-layered cake

In the first demo of GREEN-LOG, starting in Fall 2024, the Leuven Living Lab will simulate how the LaaS concept can organise pick-ups and drop-offs in a more efficient way. Therefore, the city will link its historical demand data of we.deliver to realtime supply data from the LSP’s involved in demo 1. Several GREEN-LOG components, for example day-to-day demand prediction and event-driven optimisation scenarios, will be applied to this dataset of historical demand and real-time supply. New consolidation and business opportunities can be predicted in demo 1 and data-driven insights will convince LSP’s to participate in demo 2. Maybe they will shift towards dynamic pricing based on the analysis and recommendations offered by demo 1, in parallel with the dynamic demand and supply from the LaaS?

Apart from the data layer, a policy control layer will be introduced to allow the local authority to apply business rules, aiming for less emissions, less congestion and more road safety. These business rules could be either hard measures that can be enforced (e.g. restrictions like timeframes for deliveries) or soft measures (e.g. preference for zero emission delivery). Deliveries which are compliant with these business rules, should become more attractive to the senders. How? Should senders be nudged through dynamic pricing, through a credit-based nudging system, through non-financial nudging? Surveys and simulations will guide the way in demo 1…

When the new year arrives, we will have had a first taste of a policy-driven, data-driven LaaS. Based on this first demo in Leuven and the experiences of the use cases in Ghent and Mechelen, the technological GREEN-LOG partners will finetune the components and integrations to unleash the real power of the GREEN-LOG LaaS in demo 2, steering the marketplace towards more sustainable delivery options while optimising operations for our local shops!

Photo credit: VISIT Mechelsestraat ©KarlBruninx

Harmonising Innovation: AI and Green Energy Standardisation Workshop

Amalia Ntemou from the GREEN-LOG Coordination team (Netcompany-Intrasoft) presented the projects and its standardisation efforts and plans at the “Harmonising Innovation: AI and Green Energy Standardisation Workshop” organised online on 9 July 2024 by the GREEN.DATA.AI <https://greendatai.eu/> project.

This workshop aimed to delve into the standards related to AI and Green Energy sectors. The workshop fostered a comprehensive discussion with the participating EU projects, aiming to identify their needs regarding standardisation, and gather valuable feedback from our esteemed experts.

Sustainable last-mile deliveries: the role of the Administration

Author: Sergi Martínez-Abarca Espelt / ATM

Currently, there is a clear international trend toward more liveable cities, designed and planned with citizens at the centre of the process. One of the driving forces behind this movement comes from the European Union’s Green Deal, which commits to achieving carbon neutrality in transportation by 2050. To fulfil this commitment, various measures and tools are being considered at the urban level to reduce pollution and traffic congestion. However, it’s essential to balance these measures with the existing commercial activities in cities, particularly urban goods distribution, which accounts for around 24% of total trips in Barcelona city.

The Urban Freight Distribution (UFD) plays a crucial role in addressing these challenges. In the Mobility Master Plan (2020-2025) developed by the Metropolitan Transport Authority of Barcelona (ATM) that covers 75% of Catalonia’s population, UFD management is a key focus. The goal is to establish a clean, sustainable, and secure logistics system with appropriate infrastructure, promoting digitalization and new trends.

Within this framework, the GREEN-LOG project, through its Barcelona Living Lab aims to test more efficient multimodal solutions using the railway network. The proposed use case explores three innovations in the traditional operational model, which could later be extrapolated to the entire public transport network:

Using railway stations as logistics hubs.
Leveraging passenger rail services for freight transport (a highly sustainable solution considering speed, frequency, and CO₂ emissions).
Implementing a multi-operator information system for the efficient distribution of parcels.

The scope of this solution extends beyond urban areas to metropolitan regions, potentially benefiting the many municipalities located along the railway network.

However, challenges remain, such as establishing new regulatory frameworks for rail freight transport and overcoming difficulties in setting up consolidation hubs within stations. Collaboration among different logistics operators is essential not only for shared infrastructure use but also for integrating their technological platforms and data to ensure integral and efficient parcels management.

In this context, ATM will assess the project’s viability based on results and consider measures to enhance such solutions in the new Mobility Master Plan. Reflections on regulatory and planning adjustments need to be taken into account, as well as the involvement of different stakeholders. In order to do so, ATM will concentrate its efforts to share and disseminate the project updates and outcomes within the logistics sector forums and the UFD working groups in which it is involved.

Photo credits: ATM