The central aim of the Internet of Things City Center Logistics project is to contribute in reducing the common challenges in the NSR related to urban road congestion, increase of GHG and noise in the city centers, by making use of Internet of Things and provide a traffic management and loading system for the urban city distribution. 

The sustained increase of urbanization and the significant rise of online shopping makes urban transportation and the last mile of freight transport into an increasingly big challenge. For cities to continue to be an attractive and healthy living environment there is a need to create an urban logistics solution that can minimize the travel distance and maximize the transport capacity.

To tackle these challenges, the Internet of Things (IoT) Logistics project aims to make use of Internet of Things by collecting and integrate data in a service delivery platform, which is replicable to be tested in different cities. The platform will collect the traffic data real-time and therefore can help to define the best routes for transporters to avoid congestions, also taking into account air quality. It can also show the best parking place regarding to the delivery time and loading / unloading.
IoTLogistics will pilot at least 2 IoT solutions in 3 NSR cities. The pilots will provide evidence for 25% reduced vehicle kilometres in the cities and related reduced GHG emissions.

The Internet of Things (IoT) connects different objects surrounding us (e.g. buildings, vehicles, gadgets, etc.) by sensors to the existing internet system. These sensors enable connected objects to collect a wide range of real-time data and immediately exchange it. This technology serves as a tool for creating smart cities, in this case for smart transport & logistics. This enables to: 

• Determine the exact emission output and price per kilometre for logistic service providers;
• Raise awareness of GHG-emissions and help logistic service providers make a greener choice for transport;
• Define best location for drop off points outside the city center in terms of efficiency and emission output;
• Predict freight transport better and enable at an early stage bundling of freight at outside locations for efficient last mile delivery to decrease congestion;
• Measure how many trucks and vans have the same destination and what kind of load factors the vans have and define best itinerary and time for delivery (smart routing);
• Defining value added mobility services that can be transacted to storekeepers, transporters and exploiters of hubs.

TheIoTLogistics project will demonstrate at least 2 solutions with the following Work Packages (apart from project management & communication):

• WP3: Analysis of technologies to be used in cities involved related to available sensoring / data network. The output will be used for the Service Delivery Platform that will be created in WP4.
• WP4: Based on WP3, a service delivery platform / architecture will be created that can be used in several circumstances / cities, depending on the available sensors / technologies. It will be built in such a way that it becomes replicable.
• WP5: Pilots in Assen (Netherlands) and Hoje Taastrup (Denmark). other pilots will be identified in phase 2. The pilots in WP5 will implement the use of the Service Delivery Platform.
• WP6: Monitoring effects and provide evidence for replication in other NSR cities.

With its dense population, historical cities with narrow streets, and shopping centers and other freight destinations tucked into the city centers, the North Sea Region of Europe faces specific challenges for urban freight and last mile logistics. The activities of urban freight transport have an unsustainable impact on the quality of life in cities and add to issues like: congestion, noise nuisance, visual disturbance, deterioration of the air quality and increase in CO2 emissions.  As urbanization increases and the demand for urban freight transport activities grows, there is a need for a more efficient urban freight transport and logistics system and network which could also help reduce the current negative impacts it has on a city.

Various projects exist around this topic mostly focused around network building, knowledge sharing and road mapping. With this project we want to go beyond the current state of the art and real time test solutions and demonstrate viable business cases.

• Lead partner Sensor City Assen (Netherlands)
• NTU (Denmark)
• MagicView (Netherlands)
• Assen Municipality
• Høje-Taastrup Municipality

This project is already elaborated as an Expression of Interest and was submitted at the call that closed in March 2016. If we are selected for phase 2, additional partners are searched.

Logistics service providers / city logistics / transporters

Municipalities willing to pilot IoT solutions

Parking companies

Organisations involved in paperless transport & transactions

• Municipalities with different sizes and from different NSR countries (to assure replicability) to pilot with dynamic traffic management systems (taking into account air quality), location based technology for the availability of loading / unloading facilities, flexible parking places and easy exchange information to combine loads and to transfer loads in case of multimodal solutions (i.e. from truck to cargo bike).
• After approval of the Expression of Interest, we will include cities from Belgium, the United Kingdom and Sweden. The participation of the German city of Oldenburg is already pending, the city of Hamburg also showed interest.
• Transport associations such as FDT in Denmark and Transport & Logistics in the Netherlands (TLN) will be involved in stage 2 to represent the transport & logistics sector as the end users.
• Organisations that have access to data such as data from traffic management systems. And of course organisations being able to “translate” data into applications, apps, systems. Sensor City Assen (including its broad network of organisations providing technical solutions) will bring in their practical experience on this.