Challenge
Less costly and less polluting logistic chains
Adaption to changing conditions was facilitated through dynamic planning methods involving intelligent cargo, vehicle and infrastructure systems and through combining services, resources and information from different stakeholders that were part of an open freight management ecosystem. To achieve these targets, iCargo designed and implemented a decentralized ICT infrastructure (the iCargo Ecosystem) allowing real world objects, new planning services (including CO2 calculation capabilities), and existing systems to co-exist and efficiently co-operate at an affordable cost for logistics stakeholders.
Shippers, logistic services providers and support services providers participate in the iCargo ecosystem to deliver less costly and less polluting logistic chains that meet the client expectations, thus increasing the competitiveness of both the individual players and the sector as a whole.
Approach
iCargo ecosystem
The iCargo ICT Infrastructure architecture mixes and matches existing state of the Art (in SOA, Resource oriented frameworks, Cloud Computing, etc.) with some innovative technologies developed in the project. These innovations collectively describe a Resource Oriented and Event Driven Entity Centric Service Architecture for Logistics supporting Vertical and uniform support from Sensors to Logistics Applications levels, Virtualisation of services through a Publish-Subscribe Architecture and a Virtual Network with Multi-protocol and Multi deployment support. Business Transformation imperatives such as seamless connectivity were met, while maintaining secure and controlled access through distributed peer-to-peer replication. Likewise, Real time network status supported analytics for Emissions Monitoring. Sharing amongst many users, computational services, for example for CO2 calculations (free or paid-for). Service interoperability was facilitated through connecting devices across Wireless Sensor Network Gateways and routers to Internet services that fulfil the application logic for the user.
Results
Pilots & Benefits
The iCargo Ecosystem is a ‘parallel universe’ that mirrors logistic processes, resources and data and offering capabilities for co-operative, synchronized and real-time management of transport resources (i.e. intelligent planning and controlling transport logistics chains) to optimise efficiency, quality and environmental performance.
