Inspiring innovative and green last-mile deliveries with URBANE
Interview with Ioanna Fergadiotou, URBANE Project Coordinator, Head of Athens Lab - Inlecom, on innovative and green last-mile deliveries with the URBANE project.
Watch the video interviews directly.
What is the URBANE project about?
Ioanna Fergadiotou: The project envisions to help cities mature their digital assets and facilitate the seamless movement of goods across the city. In doing so, we are setting up clean logistics solutions for last-mile. These solutions will demonstrate how digitalisation can help us monitor and facilitate the movement of goods.
How is URBANE promoting innovation in European cities?
Ioanna Fergadiotou: The key innovation aspect underlying our project is what we call the Transferability Platform. The Transferability Platform is using digital twinning tools along with AI algorithms, and blockchain solutions to help the cities project potential solutions before they are implemented. In that way we are capturing the knowledge from the first wave of living labs so that the other waves can replicate and adapt in their own contexts.
What role can the Physical Internet play in sustainable last-mile logistics?
Ioanna Fergadiotou:
URBANE tries to introduce the notion of the Physical Internet into urban logistics. This means that the parcels can be delivered within the city without human intervention in an automated way. To do that we need to put in place the right infrastructure - the digital infrastructure - and collect all the data across the parcel’s journey. The cities are getting acquainted with the basic principles of PI, and in implementing the solutions, they are also maturing their underlying infrastructure. Another important factor within adopting the Physical Internet principles, is sharing - not only data-sharing that we are mostly listening about nowadays - but also infrastructure-sharing. It could be sharing parcel lockers, it could be sharing part of a warehouse, or sharing vehicles that are used for deliveries.
Learn more about URBANE.
