Smart Urban Freight SolutIONs

The SMARTFUSION public-private partnership (PPP) will build upon existing urban freight development strategies of three demonstration regions and to demonstrate smart urban freight solutions on co-operative and sustainable city distribution in urban interurban supply chains. Leading idea is to introduce the concept of the European Green Car Initiative in the last mile operations, introduce innovative technology developments in the field of urban freight planning, vehicle technology and urban inter urban transhipment and to develop comprehensive and transferable impact assessment models for smart urban freight solutions. The main objectives can be summarized as follows: • to enhance the innovation process at urban-interurban interfaces, • to demonstrate and evaluate the technical and logistical feasibility of introducing electric vehicles and the second generation of hybrid truck technology into existing business supply chains and to apply these vehicle technologies in conjunction with information technology, operational, managerial and regulatory innovations including urban consolidation centres and telematics systems. • to determine the critical success factors in stimulating the market uptake of new sustainable vehicle technology and other innovations in the urban logistics environment. • to develop a Smart Urban Designer tool that allows the other city-regions and company supply chains to analyse the likely success and benefits of applying these innovations in their domain. The project has a clear view as to the main goals for all the public and private partners, but we also recognise that the exact nature of the innovations and the demonstrations, between the demonstrations and the assessments needs to be localised in each demonstrator. Therefore we begin with 80% of the proposal clearly envisaged, but it is essential to address the crucial 20% through concertation and consensus.