Author archives

A shortage of logistics real estate in the food sector: what to do now?

Many distribution centers have been built in the last ten years in the food sector. However, local support for even more distribution centers is declining. Therefore, companies must move towards a more efficient and more intelligent approach to distribution, together with their supply chain partners. Dutch retailers Hoogvliet, Jumbo, Albert Heijn, Picnic, Hellofresh, and Plus …

Business model design for campus-based autonomous deliveries: a Swedish case study

Autonomous deliveries are being tested on university campuses worldwide, but the impact of such technology on the business models of freight service providers is poorly understood. Through interviews, workshops, and site visits, a new paper by Jon Williamsson explores the potential impact of autonomous deliveries on the business model of a campus-based freight services provider …

GeoSence: testing and applying geofencing technologies in cities

The overall objective of the GeoSence project is to design, trial, and evaluate geofencing concepts and solutions for specific cases in cities, within the project and from other previous and ongoing geofencing initiatives and to propose new ways of successfully deploying geofencing technologies. Furthermore, tools for implementation and approaches to scaling up and spreading the …

Urban Consolidation Centres: from the perspective of suppliers

An Urban Consolidation Centre (UCC) can decrease the number of freight vehicles and their mileage in urban areas. In practice, however, UCCs often rely on subsidies and seldom make it past their starting period. Understanding how UCCs affect urban freight transport is mostly based on mathematical models and on the opinions of stakeholders who do …

FlexCURB project to improve last-mile operations in European cities

FlexCURB, an exciting new initiative focused on enhancing urban last-mile operations funded by EIT Urban Mobility, officially kicked off on Tuesday 11 January 2022. POLIS members Leuven and Toulouse will be involved, along with the cities of Strasbourg and Funchal. Thanks to the contribution of innovation-oriented cities and top urban mobility as partners, this project …

Sohjoa Last Mile: developing autonomous mobility

The EU-funded Sohjoa, Last Mile project, has released a video and key messages to support the deployment and development of shared autonomous public transport services in Europe. The key messages include policy recommendations for the international, European, and national levels. Supported by the EU’sĀ Interreg Baltic Sea Region program, the project seeks to raise awareness of …

An exploratory study on integrated logistics and mobility hubs

Passenger and logistics transport challenges are approached as two different ecosystems despite the scarce space in cities. Therefore, policymakers called upon to tackle negative transport externalities face spatial challenges. However, despite a history in which both ecosystems have already been combined and the emphasis in the (limited) existing studies on how promising the combination can …