CORDIS

Within a context of growing urban population, advances in urban logistics operations and improved local authority planning, especially in the field of the urban freight transport, can alleviate the associated negative environmental and economic impacts occurring in cities.
Several types of stakeholders are involved in such urban logistics management processes. Among them, freight carriers and shippers are interested in minimizing freight logistics costs in order to maximize their profits, while maintaining a competitive level of service to their customers. City administrators and residents are oriented towards a decrease in traffic congestion, social costs and environmental nuisances, even though they are often direct beneficiaries of high quality delivery services.
This leads to a multitude of differing and possibly conflicting objectives that are involved in urban freight transport planning and decision making, yielding a high level of complexity. This provides the main motivation for the development of tools for helping decision makers to reach higher grades of efficiency.
Despite growing academic interest, the extent to which freight transport is acknowledged and formally considered in local authority transport planning varies considerably from country to country, and on a more local level, between towns and cities. As a result, policy development with respect to urban freight and city logistics is characterised by a rather fragmented approach, with many city authorities finding it difficult to address the complex set of differing views of a large variety of stakeholders.
The project aims at identifying local authority planning needs with regards to urban/city logistics activities and the necessary pre-requisites for inclusion of stakeholders in the process. Also, the project will promote the knowledge transfer of methods and models through the conceptual development of a novel decision support tool (thanks to involved software houses).

The programme has fully achieved all of its objectives for the period covered by this report.

Work has been conducted towards the achievement of the project objectives:
Extensive reviews of the current state of the art, in terms of current practices adopted by European Local authorities in the field of Urban Freight Transport have been produced.
Extensive reviews of the current state of the art, in terms of the usage of stakeholders’ engagement methods in Urban Freight Transport policy formulation by European Local Authorities have been produced.
Extensive reviews of the current state of the art, in terms of the usage of Decision Support Tools in Urban Freight Transport policy formulation by European Local Authorities have been produced.

The aim of WP1, in the first phase, has been to understand the problems faced by local authorities when implementing Sustainable Urban Logistics (SUL) solutions, especially in terms of stakeholders’ engagement.
The report produced for D1.1 has listed early findings from the ProSFeT project, corroborated by the current literature and by interaction with stakeholders and a series of recommendations were provided to address the above mentioned needs.
A literature review and an analysis of the Stakeholders' Engagement Methods were the subject of D1.2
In the current second phase of the WP, further secondments will take place at Local Authorities to validate methods produced in WP1 and WP2 in order to continue to deal with real-world decision-making problems.

As concern WP2, a first review on the use of Decision Support Systems in the field of real world Sustainable Urban Logistics problems has been produced (D2.1) where key findings showed a dichotomy between theory and practice and that the development of strategic tools that offer decision support beyond operational levels is critical to advancement in the field of sustainable urban logistics.
The secondment of researchers at Local Authorities allowed researchers to experience current problems faced by such organisations in the field of Urban Freight Transport and, subsequently, propose solutions to them.

The first project meeting, D3.1 for of WP4, took place on the 18th January 2017 in Sheffield, UK
A progress report has been submitted as due at month 14 (D3.2).
Interim Skype meetings have been regularly held.
The Mid-term Project Meeting (D3.3) took place on 11th June 2018 in Sheffield, UK.
The intensive Summer Workshop on Urban Freight Transport and City Logistics (D3.4) was held in Sheffield on 13th-15th June 2018 and was attended by 25 postgraduate students.

As regards Dissemination (WP4), all the deliverables have produced, and project participants have given keynotes and presentations about the project at international conferences in Italy, Spain, and Belgium, and a number of publications have been delivered.
A number of papers to be submitted to peer-reviewed journals are in progress.

- By promoting knowledge transfer between academia and local authorities, the project is facilitating the adoption of more sustainable urban logistics solutions. Within this context, the project has already realised some of its impact potential. Indeed, secondment of researchers to Local Authorities (SS, CBMDC, SCC) has contributed to the solution of practical problems faced by these organisations through transfer of knowledge, creation of Decision Support methods, research and consultancy.
In all cases, work conducted by the seconded researchers is providing advice to policy- and decision-makers which could result in the implementation of solution to address the environmental impacts deriving from freight transport activities in an urban context.

- The project could have a positive impact on the operations of involved software houses (which are SMEs from Italy and the UK). Indeed, the proposed specification for a Decision Support Tool which will be created as part of WP2 could be then converted in a finished product through future projects, with the aim of promoting its utilisation across a large number of Local Authorities. The last months of the project will be devoted to the fine tuning of the specification, also involving local authorities in its validation. This could give SOFTECO and SCLOUD an advanced concept idea which could be then developed and commercialised.

- The project has had a great impact on the career of seconded early stage researchers who took part in the project activities. See, for details, table below, also including links to relevant blog posts which were produced.
Seconded Researchers, following their work with ProSFeT, have been hired in academia, logistics industry and consultancy companies.

- By promoting knowledge transfer between academia and local authorities, the project is facilitating the adoption of more sustainable urban logistics solutions. Support provided to local authorities in terms of urban freight transport could also be scaled up for formulating policy advice (for instance, through the development of guidelines for the implementation of sustainable urban logistics solutions).