PLANET 1st virtual General Assembly (GA) took place on the 7th of October, where consortium members presented their progress, along with an overview of early achievements. In the first part of PLANET’s 1st GA, the objectives and goals of PLANET project revisited as well as short-term contractual obligations, ensuring consortium members not only being fully aligned but also effectively communicating support requirements towards the entire consortium. In addition, WP1 partners presented the research goals and the expected impact of PLANET’s four position paper to other Work Packages and tasks.

More specifically, Position Paper 1, titled “Geo-economics impact of new trade routes for Europe”, addresses the research question: “What is the relation between geo-economics and new trade routes, what are the dynamics of these trade routes and how can we measure and monitor the impact on existing TEN-T corridors?”. Position Paper 2 focuses on “New trade routes’ impact on TEN-T Corridors and nodes” and “assesses the impacts of new global trade routes on the TEN-T network in Europe under a strategic angle, considering the underlying trends of these new trade routes and possible policy recommendations. Position Paper 3, “investigates and analyses the interconnections of the European Railway Network with its neighboring countries and continents such as Asia and Africa.”. Finally, Position Paper 4, titled “Transition towards the Physical Internet paradigm”, looks into “how PI could contribute to improving the efficiency of the performance of intercontinental corridors”, “what is the impact of the PLANET Technologies (Synchromodality, AI, IoT, Blockchain etc.) on Corridor development” and explores “the benefits (and drawbacks) of having an open /shared resource (warehouses, transport capacity) as PI services in the intercontinental corridors”.

Afterwards, WP2 task leaders delivered a set of detailed presentations of PLANET’s simulation and cloud platform requirements, along with the initial Architecture, IoT Infrastructure and PI Corridor Route Optimisation Requirements. The aforementioned technical presentations also included a description of Multi-Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis Decision Support Service and the Intelligent PI Network and Blockchain requirements.

In the second part of PLANET’s 1st GA, project Living Labs (LLs) and their respective business cases were presented along with their respective technical requirements and progress. Furthermore, WP5 task leaders presented an outline on Dissemination activities and Stakeholder’s analysis methodology, aiming to identify the most important stakeholders[1] of the PLANET emerging technologies and assess their position towards the project’s results. The event concluded with WP4 task leaders providing an overview of guidance and capacity building plan towards EGTN – an integrated Green EU-Global Trade Logistics Network – aligning with global T&L blockchain initiatives and ALICE PI roadmap as per PLANET’s Objectives, and the Ethics and Quality Assurance mechanisms.

[1] International Rail operators, Ports & Hubs, inland multimodal hub operators and owners, Logistic Service Providers (LSPs), Postal operators – e-commerce, Shippers, Industrial and SME providers of technologies and solutions, Academic and RTOs, Member States (MS)

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement No 860274.