Georgia Tsiochantari

PLANET 2nd Virtual General Assembly and Advisory Board Meeting

PLANET second General Assembly and Advisory Board virtual meeting took place virtually on 20^th and 21^st of October, with more than 50 consortium members participating in it.

On 20^th of October Inlecom as Project Coordinator, started PLANET’s second General Assembly series of presentations with a brief overview of PLANET project status and most important results, as well as the planned actions and milestones for the second year of the project. Following that, the first set of presentations focused mainly on outlining the vision and objectives of WP1 and explaining in detail the concept of the EU-Global T&L Network (EGTN). The WP1 overview ended with partners presenting PLANET’s integrated modelling capability and Position Papers key findings.  In the second part of the meeting, WP2 task leaders introduced the EGTN platform, along with its value proposition and innovation dimension, which consists of a unique combination of technologies and models taking one step closer to the realization of the Physical Internet (PI). More specifically, Inlecom as task leader for designing and developing the open EGTN infrastructure presented EGTN data ingestion, its infrastructure interactions, and the deployment of its cloud components. The rest of WP2 presentations elaborated on the Support Services based on Big Data analytics models, Multi-Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis Decision Support Services, the Unified Human-Machine Interfaces and the Blockchain and Smart Contracts as critical enablers for seamless global trade flows. PLANET’s GA 3^rd session was dedicated to the project Living Labs showcasing their respective business cases and progress. Finally, the last part of the event focused on WPs  4, 5 and 6, which covered: Steering innovation & building capacity towards EGTN; the Observations and Recommendations of the Advisory Board; the Dissemination and Communication Activities and lastly, the progress of the Innovation Management work stream, explaining the ongoing PLANET’s innovative outputs and the way forward of patent filling process.

On 21^st of October, the second virtual meeting with PLANET’s Advisory Board took place. The agenda included both presentations from PLANET’s consortium members and interactive discussions sessions between Advisory Board members and the project partners, after each presentation. More specifically, the virtual event started with PLANET’s introduction of Integrated Green EU-Global T&L Network concept and continued with a presentation about the Geo-economics impact of new trade routes for Europe & TEN-T corridors and nodes. The second part of the event included presentations of PLANET’s 2^nd Living Lab (China–Rotterdam/USA) business scenarios and key achievements and concluded with project's EGTN platform predictive and optimization analytics, which include forecasting services for Transport & Logistics actors and the smart contracts architecture.

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

by Georgia Tsiochantari

1st PLANET Virtual General Assembly meeting

PLANET 1^st virtual General Assembly (GA) took place on the 7^th of October, where consortium members presented their progress, along with an overview of early achievements. In the first part of PLANET's 1^st 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 1^st 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.

by Georgia Tsiochantari