Research

The mobility transition requires measures for sustainable and efficient commercial transportation. Innovative governance processes are crucial in order to overcome the associated challenges of commercial transportation in the context of the mobility transition. Ideally, the administration should have innovative processes and methods at hand to operationalize the goals in order to be able to face the increasing complexity of urban logistics and the requirements of climate protection and sustainability. Through new forms of collective and cooperative action, cities can better coordinate the multitude of stakeholders and their respective activities and create opportunities for participatory design. The project objective is to establish innovative and consolidated governance processes and methods for collective action and effective monitoring of innovations in close cooperation with practitioners, thereby supporting the target systems of the Vienna Climate Roadmap and the VIENNA 2030 strategy.

The cooperation project GAME contributes to the core ambition of the EPICUR alliance through the development of transforming research, collaborative knowledge exchange, and educational and transfer practices to train students and stakeholders helping to overcome the dramatic challenges along forest value chains. Our research approach integrates agent-based simulation models to bridge ecology, forestry, and supply chain management research. We aim to avoid process breaks, which enables the closing of critical research gaps within interdisciplinary projects and joint publications to boost innovations beyond borders. Our educational and knowledge transfer approach is based on our shared set of European values, aiming to deepen and widen the European learning experience. We aim to organize workshops and an online international wood supply chain competition, which empower the digital transformation through our serious game-based learning approaches. Furthermore, we discover and discuss the different governance structures of our research institutions and collect mobility experience through the planned research and teaching stays within our project. We stimulate synergies in agent-based modeling as well as in teaching methods for university courses on forest logistics. This enables the development of a strong fundament for promising joint research projects such as the Future Forests Cluster of Excellence application at the German Research Foundation. Consequently, the EPICUR seed funding supports our ambitions to intensify the joint cooperation ambitions of the BOKU University, University of Freiburg, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

MultiRELOAD focusses on the specific role and challenges of inland ports & hubs as multimodal freight nodes in contributing to reaching Europe’s greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target of at least 55 % by 2030, thereby shifting a substantial part of the 75% of inland freight carried today by road in the EU to inland waterways and to rail, and by increasing operational efficiency, safety and reliability of existing infrastructures (through digitalization) - thereby significantly reducing GHG emissions. MultiRELOAD will develop innovative inter-/multimodal transport solutions linking all relevant modes, using transshipment technology with different intermodal transport units (ITU’s) (incl. transport of bulk cargo using mul-timodal containers), and concepts for an optimized, standardized global goods transport system based on the con-cept of the Physical Internet. In line with the Digital Transport & Logistics Forum’s (DTLF) digitalization strategy , MultiRELOAD transforms intermodal freight nodes into interconnected data platforms to connect actors, physical and digital infrastructure, assets, resources and services on three levels: terminal, node and corridor creating a truly integrated transport and logistics network. MultiRELOAD will develop innovative multimodal freight business models removing legal, regulatory, and contractual barriers to uptake of demonstrated solutions. MultiRELOAD has a particular focus on defining and demonstrating how the business models for the three interconnected freight nodes as part of the Corridor Management System can be expanded to entire TEN-T networks. As part of this work, MultiRELOAD will develop policy rec-ommendations and address the resilience and security of data and management systems, including security against malicious or accidental interventions.