Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ADMIRAL (Advanced multimodal marketplace for low emission and energy transportation)
Reporting period: 2023-05-01 to 2024-10-31
Logistics and freight transportation are causing a significant share of global CO2 emissions. The dependency on fossil fuels in the freight transport sector is increasingly facing external pressure for radical change towards decarbonisation. The logistics industry suffers from poor overall coordination and visibility of emissions throughout the supply chain actors. The alignment between logistics suppliers and their clients to support decarbonisation in the logistics sector has been insufficient. It has been reported that there is still significant reduction potential in both direct logistics-related CO2 emissions (Scope 1 & 2) and indirect supply chain emissions (Scope 3). The importance of Scope 3 emissions has been recognised by the European Commission and there are upcoming policy frameworks (e.g. CountEmissionsEU).
Insufficient data sharing, lack of transparency to emissions and fragmented long-term goals within complex supply chains are the main challenges to be solved. This requires radical systemic change involving rapid adaption of novel technological solutions as well as changing the mindsets, processes and overall ways to do business. Digitalisation has been seen as an enabler to accelerate the decarbonisation processes in the supply chain context by improving data sharing, transparency, and general awareness of ‘hot spots’ for indirect emissions embedded within complex supply chain networks. Different types of digital platforms which can connect buyers and supplier networks can provide significant improvement to share Scope 3 emission data at different stages.
The ADMIRAL project is on a mission to develop an all-encompassing logistics marketplace platform to enhance cooperation and optimise the use of infrastructure among supply chain actors across different countries. This is done by contributing to four specific objectives: 1) Evolve freight transport and logistics companies from different supply chains to operate seamlessly; 2) Develop solutions that enable better utilisation of current assets and existing infrastructure to decrease energy use and emissions without significant investment needs; 3) Embrace systemic change towards sustainability when providing and sourcing logistics and freight cargo services; 4) Develop and pilot solutions that have altogether energy and emission reduction potential higher than 30%.
Insufficient data sharing, lack of transparency to emissions and fragmented long-term goals within complex supply chains are the main challenges to be solved. This requires radical systemic change involving rapid adaption of novel technological solutions as well as changing the mindsets, processes and overall ways to do business. Digitalisation has been seen as an enabler to accelerate the decarbonisation processes in the supply chain context by improving data sharing, transparency, and general awareness of ‘hot spots’ for indirect emissions embedded within complex supply chain networks. Different types of digital platforms which can connect buyers and supplier networks can provide significant improvement to share Scope 3 emission data at different stages.
The ADMIRAL project is on a mission to develop an all-encompassing logistics marketplace platform to enhance cooperation and optimise the use of infrastructure among supply chain actors across different countries. This is done by contributing to four specific objectives: 1) Evolve freight transport and logistics companies from different supply chains to operate seamlessly; 2) Develop solutions that enable better utilisation of current assets and existing infrastructure to decrease energy use and emissions without significant investment needs; 3) Embrace systemic change towards sustainability when providing and sourcing logistics and freight cargo services; 4) Develop and pilot solutions that have altogether energy and emission reduction potential higher than 30%.
During the first half of the ADMIRAL project, the consortium collaborated defining the initial concept of the ADMIRAL marketplace. This includes building a coherent understanding of the complex multi-stakeholder operating environment by using internal and external questionnaires, interviews and workshops supported by literature studies. Therefore, we have:
- Set up a stakeholder collaborative forum to engage project external participants to support ADMIRAL marketplace definition and validation. The project has also collaborated with Smart Freight Center (SFC) to gain a better understanding of the emission calculation (GLEC framework).
- Studied collaboration models (horizontal, vertical), barriers and drivers for logistics collaboration as well as started to define the ADMIRAL partners’ current and desired business models.
- Implemented an internal version of the developer and business portal including a discussion forum. Marketplace UI, functionalities, and service fulfilment tools development has started including API definition together with ADMIRAL SW developer companies and pilots.
- Engaged several stakeholders to discuss and gain feedback on the ADMIRAL marketplace concept to validate the concept and ensure its applicability to the operating environment and regulatory compliance.
The main results achieved while the project is at midterm can be summarised as follows:
- Scientific impact: 2 scientific journal publications, 1 doctoral thesis and 3 conference papers published during M1-M18 in addition to several public and sensitive deliverables.
- Technological impact: enhancements to existing solutions are being prepared based on rigorous background studies supported by the results from the Hackathon event.
- Social impact: active collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders (e.g. Stakeholder collaborative forum, workshops, interviews etc.) in various EU countries to support changing the fossil fuel dominant practices and mindsets.
- Plans for exploiting and disseminating results: the novel results gained are further utilised in pilots and marketplace development as well as enhancing research for supply chain decarbonization and studies on logistics platform.
- Set up a stakeholder collaborative forum to engage project external participants to support ADMIRAL marketplace definition and validation. The project has also collaborated with Smart Freight Center (SFC) to gain a better understanding of the emission calculation (GLEC framework).
- Studied collaboration models (horizontal, vertical), barriers and drivers for logistics collaboration as well as started to define the ADMIRAL partners’ current and desired business models.
- Implemented an internal version of the developer and business portal including a discussion forum. Marketplace UI, functionalities, and service fulfilment tools development has started including API definition together with ADMIRAL SW developer companies and pilots.
- Engaged several stakeholders to discuss and gain feedback on the ADMIRAL marketplace concept to validate the concept and ensure its applicability to the operating environment and regulatory compliance.
The main results achieved while the project is at midterm can be summarised as follows:
- Scientific impact: 2 scientific journal publications, 1 doctoral thesis and 3 conference papers published during M1-M18 in addition to several public and sensitive deliverables.
- Technological impact: enhancements to existing solutions are being prepared based on rigorous background studies supported by the results from the Hackathon event.
- Social impact: active collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders (e.g. Stakeholder collaborative forum, workshops, interviews etc.) in various EU countries to support changing the fossil fuel dominant practices and mindsets.
- Plans for exploiting and disseminating results: the novel results gained are further utilised in pilots and marketplace development as well as enhancing research for supply chain decarbonization and studies on logistics platform.
The marketplace concept goes beyond traditional transaction platforms providing the capability for application developers and integrators to build and integrate applications with the marketplace utilising the APIs and knowledge provided by developer portal. The main improvements to the current state of the art have been:
- Concepting multimodal marketplace concept which aligns with the CountEmissionEU regulation (Figure 1.).
- Concepting an innovative land & sea routing engine which allows service buyers to request lower emissions services and compare their route & energy choices impacts on full route & route legs emissions and costs.
- Designing UX & UI trading experiences which combine best-of-class user experience with advance ML analytical data for combined powerful user experience.
- Further development of AI-based cargo planning tool. It is currently being analysed in actual port operating environment. This solution aims to strengthen the operational and environmental efficiency.
- The standalone solutions for pilots have been prepared for further testing.
- Concepting multimodal marketplace concept which aligns with the CountEmissionEU regulation (Figure 1.).
- Concepting an innovative land & sea routing engine which allows service buyers to request lower emissions services and compare their route & energy choices impacts on full route & route legs emissions and costs.
- Designing UX & UI trading experiences which combine best-of-class user experience with advance ML analytical data for combined powerful user experience.
- Further development of AI-based cargo planning tool. It is currently being analysed in actual port operating environment. This solution aims to strengthen the operational and environmental efficiency.
- The standalone solutions for pilots have been prepared for further testing.