Research Projects

The project’s vision is to strengthen the capacity of local authorities & stakeholders for sustainable policy making in Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning, by providing tools for managing the “implementation chain” (problem capture – decision – planning – testing – assessment – adjustment – implementation). The project encourages the development and implementation of sustainable Freight Policy and respective measures (innovative smart logistics solutions and corrective actions), bringing improved understanding of cost effective strategies, measures & business models to reduce the carbon footprint of logistics operations in cities. Also the replication of best practice methods and methodologies as well as the adoption of success stories in similar city cases is also promoted.

The project scope is the enabling of knowledge and understanding of urban freight distribution and service trips in order for cities to implement effective and sustainable policies and measures and facilitate stakeholder collaboration for sustainable city logistics. This guidance will support the choice of the most optimal and applicable solutions for urban freight and service transport, and will facilitate stakeholder collaboration and the development, field testing and transfer of best governance and business models.
To this end, the project objectives are set as follows:

The key concept of the project is to initiate and enable city logistics policy formulation and decision-making as part of a city’s sustainable urban mobility planning, and to support implementation and take up of appropriate policies and measures. This will be achieved through guidance provision to policy makers, based on sustainable business and logistics models, and the facilitation of cooperative schemes and consensus among stakeholders. The policies and measures applied in urban environment are grouped into two mega concepts:

Consensus amongst the involved stakeholders constitutes the main ambition of NOVELOG, which is pursued in each and every work package through the building a communications and knowledge interchange platform, at various levels, concerning urban logistics. The ultimate goal is to involve all stakeholders (including public) in the decision making process, in order to raise their awareness towards the upgrading of UFT activities and services, keeping their interest alive and focusing on the enhancement of sustainability, liveability and effectiveness of the implemented policies and measures as selected, approved and adopted by them according to their pursuits, goals and emerging needs.

Official website: http://www.novelog.eu/ 

The Targeted Research Program “i-mobi Volos – Information Mobility Platform in the city of Volos”, is assigned to TTLog by the Research Committee of the University of Thessaly.

The project aims at developing an intelligent mobility platform informing the citizens and tourists of Volos for all available modes, routes and timetables, and a combination of them, under real-time information provision.

For more information visit the project website: http://imobivolos.uth.gr/website/

The platform is available in the following link: http://imobivolos.uth.gr/

The undergraduate courses: Transportation planning, Design and evaluation of transportation systems and Road safety are digitalized and available through the Open Courses Platform of the University of Thessaly: http://eclass.uth.gr/eclass/modules/course_metadata/opencourses.php?fc=57

City-HUB is a 30-month EU-funded project, bringing together leading experts of design and urban integration, transport operation and business, with local and regional authorities and end-users organizations, which represent the economic, demographic and territorial diversity of Europe.

The project aims at contributing to the design and operation of seamless, smart, clean and safe intermodal public transport systems, addressing, at the same time, how these interchanges should be designed in order to ensure that “vulnerable” target groups, i.e. the elderly, youth, physically and mentally handicapped people can adequately benefit from these interchanges.

Within the project, an integrated business model will be developed and a comprehensive set of methodological guidelines will be proposed, addressing different aspects of an urban interchange and promoting public transport. The integrated model will be validated through a set of European case studies and the methodological guidelines will be fully exploited through a European transferability exercise and dissemination initiatives to target groups throughout Europe.

STRAIGHTSOL – Strategies and measures for smarter urban freight solutions, a research project, focusing on Urban-interurban shipments, co-funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Cooperation Work Programme Sustainable Surface Transport.

The objectives of STRAIGHTSOL are threefold:

1. Develop a new impact assessment framework for measures applied to urban-interurban freight transport interfaces.
2. Support a set of innovative field demonstrations showcasing improved urban-interurban freight operations in Europe.
3. Apply the impact assessment framework to the live demonstrations and develop specific recommendations for future freight policies and measures.

The demonstrations represent cutting edge initiatives from leading stakeholders like DHL Supply Chain, Kuehne Nagel and TNT, and cover Brussels, Barcelona, Thessaloniki, Utrecht, Lisbon, Oslo and the south of England. STRAIGHTSOL will contribute to the Commission’s research agenda through: 1) an implementation of sustainable urban-interurban freight transport solutions, 2) widely disseminating the experiences and effects from the demonstrations amongst the logistics community, 3) demonstrating the added value of the evaluation tool framework for assessing last mile distribution and urban-interurban freight activities. The STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations and deliverables will give policy makers and transport industry players input for future measures in the field of last mile distribution and urban-interurban freight transport interfaces at the European, country, region, city and local levels.

For more information, please visit the project’s official website:

http://www.straightsol.eu/

The overall objective of BGLC is to increase the integration between the northern Scandinavia and Barents, with its vast natural resources and increasing industrial production, with the industrial chain and end markets in the Baltic Sea Region and central Europe.