Over 120 participants attended the AEOLIX final conference entitled “The future of logistics data exchange and services” at the International Maritimes Museum in Hamburg. At this event, AEOLIX presented the results of a 3 year long research on supply chain visibility and interoperability involving 12 Living Labs and 18 European countries.
The event kicked off with a speech by Szymon Oscislowski, DG MOVE, European Commission, who classified digitalisation as one of 10 Commission priorities for 2015-2019. Mr Oscislowski stressed that to make e-transport happen, it is crucial that the different systems are connected and interoperable.
A few more short keynote speeches followed on the topic of logistics and digitalisation on national and international levels.
Rebecca Huang, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, presented the United Nations priority to ratify the e-CMR protocol as part of the newly adopted ITC (Inland Transport Committee) strategy which will now be open for signature for all United Nations Member States. “UNECE is willing to work in this field with ERTICO and its partners.” – added Rebecca Huang.
“Improving the services is the main focus of the logistics and supply chain. In reality sharing data in logistics is more complicated. We need an open eco-system in order to share data and AEOLIX is a good example how to do it and to be the solution not only for its customers but also but also other platforms in a trustful and secure manner. ” said Sebastian Saxe, Chief Digital Officer at Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg.
Harry Evers CEO, ITS Hamburg 2021 talked about the idea behind the next ITS World Congress taking place in Hamburg in 2021. The next ITS World Congress 2021 in Hamburg will focus not only on logistic topics, MaaS, but also drones and regulations issues, AI, start-ups, demonstrations, projects and sessions.
Johannes Springer, T-Systems, stressed the importance of embracing new technologies for logistics sector such as 5G to ensure quality of connectivity which is key when it comes to data sharing.
AEOLIX project key figures and objective were presented by the AEOLIX project coordinator, Eusebiu Catana, ERTICO-ITS Europe who also told the story behind AEOLIX coming from fragmentation of logistics IT systems and lack of connectivity for logistics decision making.
German Herrero, Atos, gave an overview of the Living Labs demonstration and stressed how in order to communicate between each other the AEOLIX Living Labs needed to understand and exchange data which was a departing point for the creation of AEOLIX Dashboard by Atos.
Maria Pia Fanti, ICOOR and Living Lab 4 leader presented the intermodal customs living lab and a live demonstration of 
the Trieste Living Lab which has the objective to optimise customs procedures and intermodal transport efficiency.
The second part of the afternoon took form of an interactive session “Living Labs Marketplace” organised around 12 living labs who presented and demonstrated how the AEOLIX collaborative logistics ecosystem is tested and validated for their specific use cases.
The outcomes of the Living Labs marketplace were presented by Georgia Aifadopoulou, CERTH-HIT who also gave an overview of the overall impact on society, service quality, efficiency and cooperation in the supply chain showing an increasing shift towards digitalisation in the community.
Eusebiu Catana provided an overview of the future steps for AEOLIX and the newly established FENIX – A European Federated Network of Information exchange in Future Logistics which will be implemented in 11 pilot sites throughout Europe, out of which several already participated in AEOLIX.
The future of logistics lies in continuing to develop trust between the data consumers who must fully accept the data owner’s usage policy. AEOLIX will continue pursuing the idea of decentralization of data storage in an ecosystem of data.
Phanthian Zuesongdham,Head of Digital and Business Transformation at Hamburg Port Authority and Master of Ceremony closed the event pointed out that in order to make data sharing a reality we all need to continue to collaborate on different levels, from individual companies to international level.
Click here to view more pictures from the final event.
The presentations from the final event available for download here.
