Digitisation of Logistics Flows: Implications for European Transport Infrastructures
Can digitisation remove barriers for logistics and freight operators? (Source: Envato Elements)
As with many other industries, the logistics and freight sector is taking large steps towards the digitisation of operations and services. Apart from the near real-time tracking of parcels, loads and containers, several EU projects are also working on removing administrative, legislative and executive barriers that operators are facing every day. STA is actively involved in one of these projects, called KEYSTONE.
Long queues at border crossings could become a thing of the past with digital transformation (Source: Envato Elements)
The project has a special focus on involving both operators and industry as well as enforcement authorities at the same time. The first year of stakeholder consultation and engagement reached more than 200 persons in the sector to understand in detail the stakeholder needs, identify existing best practices and tools/platforms and conclude requirements and gaps for digital solutions. During several focus discussion groups and interviews, the project managed to effectively bring both industry operators and authorities to a joint table and discuss openly their wishes, hopes, fears, experiences and focuses for the future.
The results were prepared by the University of Coventry (United Kingdom) and are available here.
But what are the implications of these findings for transport infrastructures?
X2I (everything-to-infrastructure) is a holistic concept, that requires all stakeholders to collaborate (Source: Mouser Electronics)
While some of the identified points focus on policy-makers or standardisation bodies (such as a fragmented regulatory environment and standardisation landscape), some of the findings hold direct implications for transport (road) infrastructures:
Rethinking new transportation infrastructures: It is time to fundamentally rethink the purpose that transportation infrastructures have before anything else. In the case that a new infrastructure is needed, the opportunity should be taken to integrate innovations, which favour sustainable, active and shared ways to move goods and people around, such as a more extensive charging infrastructure (including inductive charging and V2G (vehicle-to-grid) applications), liquefied petroleum gas infrastructure, car sharing areas that are accessible via public transport, multimodal integrations between highways, airports and train stations and many more. Equipping new infrastructures by design with additional sensors, lasers, antennas and Wi-Fi connections prepares them for the future of mobility and enables mobility, transport and logistics innovation to be taken up by end users with more ease.
Retrofitting technologies to existing infrastructures: To make transport infrastructures “smart” and enable smart enforcement operations but also the wider and smoother deployment of CCAM or inductive charging technologies, existing infrastructures need to be retrofitted. In particular, the X2I (everything-to-infrastructure) communication can only be enabled if additional sensors, repositories and information is collected and send by the infrastructure itself. This requires on the one hand an increased connectivity to handle more frequent and larger datasets and on the other improved edge computing capabilities to provide near real-time information through correlation of data points in an environmentally friendly way. The vision is to retrofit the infrastructures with sensors, laser, cameras, antennas and pneumonic tubes where it is needed and provide this information free of charge to vehicles or end users using the infrastructure.
Harmonising operations, markings and accessibility: Apart from the increase of the number and quality of services offered to the end user, an increase in digitisation has also several advantages for operators, maintenance and accessibility purposes. Operators can better predict demand and handle traffic flows more dynamically. Enforcement authorities can digitally detect offences (like theft or human trafficking) and compliance conflicts (like lack of permits of technical certificates for driver or vehicle) and conduct checks in an automatic and more targeted manner. Logistics providers can schedule their fleets more accurately and check carefully that the driver and vehicle are progressing within the timeframe and without complications on their route.
Bringing everyone on-board: One of the key characteristics of the KEYSTONE project is indeed the wide and continuous integration of industry and governmental stakeholders to create one joint digital solution for logistics compliance. In general, this approach should be adopted also in the infrastructure world - where competitors, customers, suppliers, raw material providers and equipment manufacturers don’t usually work together to develop a holistic, “shared” vision of the transport infrastructures of the future and instead tend to focus on their particular market only. This “systemic” thinking is an upcoming trend in the world of mobility and transport - for example in the TEN-T regulation, which connects cities along their corridors instead of considering only the boundaries of their city centres - or indeed in the new EU taxonomy (read STA Vice-President Elena De-La-Peña’s Discussion Paper on the matter here).
Maintenance of “brick” infrastructure: While digitisation is a great added value to existing systems and despite its crucial role to enable mobility, transport and logistics for the future, the final importance lies on the status and integrity of “good old” transport infrastructures. Digitisation needs to be applied only in use cases where an added value can be created. If roads, railway tracks, canals, airport runways or pedestrian and cycling lanes are built with unsustainable methods or materials or fall apart due to lack of good maintenance practices, digitisation will not cut it. A good (bad) example for this are the decrepit highway bridges along Germany’s Autobahn due to a lack of investments and maintenance. In such cases, digitisation cannot mitigate the lack of function and safety.
To summarise - digitisation is a great tool to add value to transport infrastructures of the future. Although the practice is still being tested and few digital tools are used effectively on European roads today, they are direly needed to catapult forward the implementation and integration of more sustainable, shared, accessible, inclusive and effective means of transport and logistics. Let’s push forward to ensure that Europe remains at the very forefront of transport infrastructure innovation worldwide!