The world is experiencing an unparalleled growth in last-mile transport following the unprecedented growth of e-commerce. During the past decade, e-commerce has risen at a faster than ever rate with sales ratios being tripled from 2014 to 2020. The steep curve is expected to continue in the years to come, fueled by a multitude of factors related to societal changes and technological advancements.
This new e-commerce reality brings a number of challenges to urban and peri-urban ecosystems and puts immense pressure on courier companies for seamless servicing of higher volume home deliveries. Against this backdrop, the EU-funder Horizon Europe GREEN-LOG project, which was launched on 1 January 2023, brings together 29 high-profile partners from all over Europe, namely Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, to accelerate the shift to a new era of economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable city logistics.
The GREEN-LOG approach provides a cutting-edge simulation environment for scenario building combining different solutions to enable the integration of last-mile delivery interventions with the highest possible impact on environmental sustainability and traffic reduction, also considering their financial viability.
GREEN-LOG will offer Logistics-as-a Service platforms for interconnected city logistics, automated delivery concepts using autonomous vehicles and delivery droids, cargo-bike-based innovations for sustainable micro-consolidation, and multimodal parcel deliveries integrating public transportation. The solutions will be supported by networked city logistics dataspaces that supply dynamic services for proactive ecosystem optimisation while respecting the interests of stakeholders including consumers, businesses, and the city.
The approach will be deployed and validated in five Urban Living Labs (LLs):
- LL#1 Athens (Greece) | Multi-stakeholder collaborations for shared MCCs and optimized cargo-bike use
- LL#2 Barcelona (Spain) | Multimodal last-mile deliveries
- LL#3 Flanders (Gent, Leuven and Mechelen) | Last mile Urban Logistics as a Service
- LL#4 Oxfordshire (the UK) | Next generation last mile delivery integrating cargo-bikes and AVs
- LL#5 Ispra (Italy) | Next generation last mile delivery integrating delivery robots
These inclusive stakeholder Urban LLs will act as city platforms for nurturing social innovation, understanding of user needs, habits and preferences, co-designing, and deploying of last mile delivery solutions while allowing the most effective exchange of ideas. GREEN-LOG LLs will provide an inclusive set of demonstration sites that cover EU regions with different Urban Logistics characteristics, and varying challenges related to sustainability, congestion and urban density, economic growth, social change and business ecosystem.
Three follower cities that experience rapid economic and social change, namely Arad (Romania), Helsingborg (Sweden), Valga (Estonia), will be involved in testing the transferability of the proposed innovations.
To materialise its objectives, GREEN-LOG follows a multidisciplinary approach, bringing together 8 SMEs, 5 universities and research institutes, a large company which is also coordinating the project, 5 major last-mile logistics operators, 9 city authorities, addressing policy and road transport management aspects, while providing the means to engage a wider network of over 20 logistics operators with already in place agreements and local business associations, one city logistics association and an association of EU cities.
GREEN-LOG is co-funded by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA), a funding body which was launched in 2021 to advance the European Green Deal through high-quality programme management.
Stay tuned for more developments towards an era of optimized zero emission last-mile logistics!