WP leadership with a regional pilot case on Sustainable Multimodal Transport Solutions in Construction Logistics through the Use of Inland Waterways

The construction industry faces growing pressure to reduce its environmental impact, including emissions from logistics and transportation. The use of inland waterways, such as the Twente Kanaal in this project, presents a valuable opportunity to address these challenges. However, this potential also requires addressing the substantial organizational, logistical, and infrastructural challenges.

In this project, as a consortium, our goal is to develop a collaborative multimodal transport model for construction industry utilizing the Twente Canal for transporting construction materials and waste. Our focus is on economic and environmental sustainability of this modal shift while we are concerned with operational efficiency and effectiveness of this new of way working. To this end, we simulate possible use of the canal including how to combine this with other transport modes for construction logistics and demonstrate benefits, and develop innovative business models to share these benefits among stakeholders to encourage further collaboration beyond our consortium, and finally we aim at establishment of a dedicated construction hub.

Since Twente Kanaal is a strategical inland waterway on the North Sea-Baltic corridor, connecting to major European sea ports and hinterlands, our research also contributes to the current[1] and future EU initiatives. The canal also has economic contribution to the region, the project has strategic importance with its economic impact and job creation potentials for the construction and logistics sector in Twente and in a broader sense Overijssel.

[1] https://www.inlandwaterwaytransport.eu/

We are interested in Destination 6 and the following upcoming calls:

HORIZON-CL5-2024-D6-01-06​: Optimising multimodal network and traffic management, harnessing data from infrastructures, mobility of passengers and freight transport

​HORIZON-CL5-2024-D6-01-08​: Improved transport infrastructure performance – Innovative digital tools and solutions to monitor and improve the management and operation of transport infrastructure​