Three CO-GISTICS papers were presented during the ITS Congress in Strasbourg in the session TS08 on Freight and logistics tools.
Jose Maria Salanova Grau of the Centre for Research and Technology (CERTH) from Greece, presented two papers entitled Impact assessment of cooperative services for freight transport and A methodological approach for a Cost-Benefit Analysis of cooperative freight transport services. The first paper describes the methodology used in the Co-GISTICS project for estimating the main key performance indicators of the tested services, which account for a total of five cooperative services tested in seven European cities. The methodology proposed follows a multivariate approach in order to clearly identify the main contributors to the performance of each service. External variables, such as weather, road type, slope or congestion are also used in aiming at analysing under which conditions each service works better and therefore give input to the definition of guidelines for a better implementation and use of the services.
The second presentation examined the problem of applying Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) to evolutions of services and technological advances in cooperative freight transport services. Josep Maria presented the methodological approach used in the CO-GISTICS project. In order to show the innovation of the proposed methodology, he reviewed the approaches used in other projects. Several Key Performance Indicators are evaluated before and after the deployment of the novel services realized in the project pilot sites. In particular, in each pilot site the stakeholders, public or private, are asked to evaluate operational costs before the project, investments costs to deploy the new services and operational costs for those new services. The collection of data allows evaluating costs and benefits per site and per stakeholder.
Iraklis Stamos of IRU based in Belgium presented his paper entitled Exploring the commercialization potential of freight transport services the CO-GISTICS project.
Iraklis presented the findings of 46-item questionnaire addressed to truck drivers, commercial fleet operators and managers, regarding their trust on cooperative freight transport services and their willingness to invest on them as well the respective expectations they might have out of services, such as the ones piloted in within the CO-GISTICS project. The findings of the questionnaire survey will motivate the discussion around the way the CO-GISTICS services should be introduced in the market and highlight their commercialization potential. In general, findings show that respondents trust the services to improve the efficiency of their daily operations and reduce respective costs; yet, this trust is not accompanied with a strong willingness to invest on these services, posing a barrier for their further deployment.
