E-FREIGHT

Title: European e-freight capabilities for co-modal transport

Summary: The key issues that will be addressed in e-Freight are:

• Intra-European trade is complicated due to disconnected logistic chains. This hindrance conflicts with the legitimate ambition of achieving a European maritime transport space without barriers. Linked to these issues is the broader need for simplification and harmonisation of regulatory requirements and accelerated development of EU and National Single Windows to streamline traffic and cargo reporting to authorities particularly in the context of co-modal transport. Further, safety and security issues need special attention, particularly in establishing efficient collaboration between authorities and transportation stakeholders to improve the development of capabilities for proactive and remedial measures to protect the environment as well as the security of freight transport networks;

• Optimisation of road, rail, and waterborne transportation resources to achieve co-modality requires improved ways for transport stakeholders to establish co-operation and to integrate their processes. For this, the e-Freight project will introduce Information Highways for Co-modality to denote solutions assisting transport operators to establish common end-to-end transportation processes incorporating regulations compliance and intelligent monitoring and control;

• In centrally managed networks prevailing in transportation services, coordination is achieved through the network s formal structure and central communications. The movement towards a much more open environment for the realisation of co-modality goals is dependent on transport service providers publishing their services in the internet in a manner that can readily be used by independent web based transport management systems. This requires both stakeholder engagement in the promotion of open networks and innovative but practical utilisation of web services standards and enabling technologies including a suitable registry of e-Freight services.

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