Eleven cities and regions to replicate solutions on Digital Twins for urban logistics planning

Brussels, 26th of March 2021 – Eleven cities and regions join the Transferability Platform of the H2020 funded LEAD to benefit from a tailored replication programme for the development and deployment of solutions on Digital Twins for city logistics, responding to increasing challenges from on-demand economy and last-mile logistics.

The Horizon 2020 funded LEAD project will create Digital Twins of urban logistics networks in six cities, to support experimentation and decision making with on-demand logistics operations in a public-private urban setting. Digital Twins are a digital replica of a complex real-world urban environment that represents different processes, actors, and their interaction.

Following a call for applications, eleven cities and regions from eight countries have been selected to become members of the LEAD Transferability Platform. They will benefit from a tailored replication programme, to be co-created considering their local context, strategies, and ambitions, in tandem with the results from the project. The activities include capacity-building, training, technical visits, interactive workshops, and customised feedback, which aims to contribute to the members’ Sustainable Urban Logistics and Mobility Plans.

The members of the Transferability Platform will benefit from the project results but are also expected to contribute to its knowledge exchange and building by informing project outcomes, stemming from their experiences and needs.  The members will be complementary to the six LEAD Living Labs in terms of knowledge and skills, level of maturity in the development of city logistics and Digital Twins solutions, but also geographic coverage.

The members of the LEAD Transferability Platform are Noord-Brabant (Netherlands), Antwerp, Hasselt, Leuven (Belgium), Murcia (Spain), Southwark (UK), Timisoara (Romania), and Toulouse (France), and the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation bringing together the Municipalities of Nova Gorica, Šempeter Vrtojba (Slovenia) and Gorizia (Italy).

The activities of this group are planned to kick-off in April, with the organisation of an initial moment of exchange between the selected members and the LEAD partners.  This will be followed by a webinar on the LEAD report City Logistics landscape in the era of on-demand economy: main challenges, trends and factors influencing city logistics and a series of bilateral exchanges to further analyse the members’ priorities and expectations, in the second half of the year.

About LEAD

LEAD operates under the Research and Innovation Actions funding scheme, as facilitated by Horizon 2020 and the ‘Mobility for Growth programme and it will run until December 2022. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 861598.

Contact:

Giacomo Lozzi, Senior Project Manager – Coordinator Urban Freight, Polis GLozzi@polisnetwork.eu

Claudia Ribeiro, Project Officer, Polis Cribeiro@polisnetwork.eu