Budapest’s LEAD workshop contributes to development of its SULP
Within the framework of LEAD, on 2 June, the Budapest Living Lab organised its second workshop for local stakeholders working on urban freight transportation and city logistics. The session focused on validating the LEAD project’s process, and simultaneously, also inviting the participants to be involved in the ongoing Sustainable Logistics Planning (SULP) for Budapest.
Budapest is one of the LEAD pilot cities implementing a Digital Twin of its local logistics network. The Living Lab coordinator team: BKK Centre for Budapest Transport, Széchenyi István University and Waberer’s Szemerey Logistics will test different B2B scenarios and measure their effects on the road traffic flow and the environment. The test scenarios will feature different mini hub solutions, alternate delivery time windows and low or zero-emission vehicles for serving last-mile distribution.
The workshop highlighted LEAD strategies and tools that are most relevant for the Living Lab stakeholders and the combination of those methodologies that will be tested through the pilot activities. These methods – including simulations with the Digital Twin and their validation through the live pilot actions – will provide the existing Macroscopic Transport Model of Budapest with an improved freight transportation layer. This will also play a key role in the decision-making processes by helping to better understand correlations between the different components of the delivery chain in such a fast-changing environment.
Presentations on current LEAD project activities and SULP planning were followed by some interactive sessions where the participants were divided into groups to identify the actual main problems and challenges affecting city logistics and last-mile delivery flow in Budapest and to discuss the priorities of different solutions on the short and the long-run.
Regarding the implementation of the different measures, the groups preferred, in general, the ones that support a more reliable and predictable service operation, with better cooperation between the different actors. This is also one of the key values of the LEAD project, as it promotes the sharing of knowledge and technologies between other players (public administrations, municipalities, service providers), as well as supports the decision-making mechanisms of demand-responsive business models.
The group session and the workshop helped the participants in many ways, encouraging the openness for cooperation and being more transparent for the sake of achieving the shared goals. Each participant was interested in the future exploitation of LEAD results and tools and in assisting the sustainable urban logistics planning for the city.
The next Budapest Living Lab workshop is planned to be held by 2022 autumn, focusing on the pilot implementation and Digital Twin validation progress.
