EPICENTER (Enhanced Physical Internet-Compatible Earth-frieNdly freight Transportation answER)

30 October, 2024

Summary:

The Port Authority of the Bay of Algeciras (APBA) has participated in the ePIcenter project, focused on enabling seamless freight transport, with a special focus on the technological and operational opportunities offered by the Physical Internet, synchro-modal operations and other disruptive technologies such as Hyperloop, Industry 4.0 and autonomous vehicles.

The project, which has been funded by the European Horizon 2020 program and has had a 42-month implementation period, has focused on the development of innovative systems that can have a tangible effect on the creation of more efficient and sustainable logistics chains, and has carried out a series of large-scale demonstrations on major shipping routes from Europe to Canada and the United States, as well as on new trade routes such as the Northern Sea Route and the new Silk Roads, to test new ideas that have emerged within the framework of the project.

The overall concept has been to establish a set of living, interoperable software tools, services and methodologies that can be rapidly deployed and used by a wide range of public sector and industry stakeholders to address the many challenges and issues related to multimodal freight transport systems and logistics operations and to react nimbly to volatile market and political changes and major climate shifts affecting traditional freight transport routes.

Among other examples of use, the following ones are included:

• Applying emerging technologies and logistics concepts such as AI, Blockchain, synchromodality and the Physical Internet to major international and intra-European routes to understand their impact and potential benefit in terms of improved use of infrastructure and capacity.
• Using advanced algorithms and innovative research methodologies to understand better the impact of new Arctic and Silk Road routes, addressing environmental and socio-economic factors, as well as the effect on freight flows and
  consequential interfaces/nodes capacity needed to link EU and Global networks.
• Optimising multimodal transfer zone operations, especially in the context of innovative modularization concepts, new freight flow strategies (e.g. “bundling”) and new transport and handling modes (e.g. Hyperloop, robotic vehicles) to advance towards seamless door-to-door operations in an Industry 4.0 world.

Finally, it has been intended that this will be a “living toolset”, i.e., that ePIcenter will not just be a static set of applications and tools, but will also provide a framework that allows this set to grow organically beyond the end of the project. For example, as new data sources, or new research methods, or new types of algorithms are developed, it will be possible to easily add them to the ePIcenter family. In this regard, the appropriate governance, standards and exploitation plan have been put in place during the project to drive this process forward once the project is completed. This ensures that, in the future, ePIcenter will continue to provide answers to new questions and challenges as they arise.

APBA has participated in work packages 2 (Global Visibility Technologies & Governance) and 4 (Demonstrators, Showcase & Lessons Learned). In addition, it has also provided support in the cross-cutting communication and dissemination activities of the project, taking advantage of its experience in the management of its own initiatives such as the Algeciras BrainPort 2020 and the Innovation Journey programs.

The scope of work, within each of the aforementioned packages, has been as follows:

• T2.3 Exploiting the potential of modularization, digitization and AI. Within this task, the research and design of the necessary extensions to be applied to the identification “active tags” of modular containers (e.g., Connectainer, a 40-foot container that can be separated and converted into two 20-foot containers while in transit) has been addressed using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) such as Blockchain. The potential impact of such modular containers on the Physical Internet concept has been analyzed and the acceptance of such technologies by authorities has been investigated. A crucial issue that has also been addressed is the facilitation of scheduling (working at agreed times, arranging equipment according to fixed schedules, etc.).
• T4.3 ePI Node Demonstrator – the “Node of the Future” (DGG). This task has focused on new transport technologies and optimization of the multimodal transfer zone, testing the simulation and optimization capabilities of the ePIcenter toolkit and generating new knowledge on the impact of these innovations on the logistics network. On the one hand, a pilot test of the T-POD, the world’s first autonomous electric truck, has been developed using Continental’s operations as a test bed and, on the other hand, a proof of concept of Hyperloop technology has been carried out using Volkswagen Group’s operations as a test bed. This has involved laboratory simulators to identify optimal speed, capsule size, acceleration and braking power, among others.

The project’s innovation:

• In the case of “hardware” innovations, the transport network configuration impact comparator, with its extensible architecture, will greatly facilitate the design of new solutions and quantification of benefits, with a view to presenting concrete business cases to skeptical investors and end-users.
• Software and algorithm developers will be able to benefit from the low-cost, cloud-based AI architecture offered by the ePIcenter Community, and the more rigorous application standards that the initiative will encourage, reducing integration costs and making the market more competitive.
• The multi-layered nature of the architecture, with strongly enforced data access rules and restrictions, will make more data publicly available and make it easier for innovators to convince potential customers to share example data sets. Many proof-of-concept projects have run into business and technical constraints that prevent the release of data to a developer (e.g., because they contain unnecessary confidential information that cannot be easily removed). ePIcenter will reduce this barrier significantly.
• The use of low-cost solutions (open source, open standards, cloud-based) maximizes the opportunities for developing country innovators to participate.

The project’s results:

• Improve the integration of the European transport network with the global network, benefiting from the emergence of new trade routes and harmonized platforms in support of the sustainable development of new logistics routes and their linkage to national/regional markets.
• Understand the effects of emerging technologies on the flow of goods and the consequent guidelines for optimizing vehicle, infrastructure and operations.
• Facilitate the development of disadvantaged regions and their inclusion in the international trading system. Better understanding of the linkages between technological development, trade and geopolitics.
• Validate research on a number of use cases through demonstration, trials and pilot testing with the direct involvement of service providers and end users.

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