Digitization essential for smart and sustainable mobility

Nico Anten has been working at Connekt for 25 years. He can therefore tell you a great deal about the organization. At present, his work within Connekt focuses primarily on Lean & Green International and EDIC. He explains more about these initiatives.

One of Connekt's main themes is digitization and data. Wim Wendt, director of consulting innovating infrastructures at CGI, explains more about developments in this field.

Wim Wendt has known Connekt for 20 years. He thinks of Connekt as a warm nest. Furthermore, he says: “For me, Connekt is first and foremost a network organization. Secondly, it is an organization that sets up public-private programs in the smart mobility and smart logistics domain. Within the network organization, public and private parties meet in an atmosphere of trust. That is very important. But it also offers members added value in that they can jointly carry out projects that are of importance to the Netherlands. Otherwise, it is just a talking shop. Those two roles reinforce each other.”

Major challenges are at play in the field of mobility and logistics, in which technology plays an important role. Organizations must collaborate, you have to deal with issues regarding governance, and there is the public-private discussion: why would you as a company share your data with governments, and what do you get in return? “Connekt is located precisely at that intersection where policy and legislation, organizations, technology, and people come together.”

Exchanging information
Digitization plays an essential role in sustainable and smart mobility, says Wendt. If you want to be smarter and more sustainable in any way, you have to collaborate. For example, reducing truck movements by bundling or by using multimodal transport movements. For collaboration, in whatever form, the exchange of information is necessary. “It is amazing how much is currently still being exchanged via phone calls, text messages, or even by fax,” says Wendt. “There is still so much potential for improvement. And that is only possible with digitization.”

Connected
Digitization is a difficult process. Technology is not the limiting factor; it lies mainly in legislation, organization, and collaboration, says Wendt. He talks about the ITS Traffic of over 10 years ago. A major event in Amsterdam where all kinds of connected cars were driving around. The cars were connected to each other, but also to the road infrastructure, for example with the matrix signs above the road or the traffic control systems. “The kind of services that you are now gradually seeing in mobile apps and the latest generation of in-car systems, we actually already had running back then.”

Yet these connected cars are not yet a reality in road traffic. “In the future, we can use roads in a much more efficient way. I think we have only seen the beginning of that. It is just going much slower than we thought 10 years ago.” According to Wendt, this is due to the collaboration between parties. “I think that is quite good in the Netherlands, but many factors are involved. Standardization is truly painstaking work.”

But there is also the question: which data do I share now and which data do I not? That is also a matter of time.” Collaboration is also a central theme for CGI’s iAMLAB. This is the innovation laboratory where work is carried out with all kinds of parties on intelligent data-sharing services that are now also finding their way into logistics projects such as the BDI (Basic Data Infrastructure), in which Connekt is also very active.

Steps are being taken. However, paper is still used extensively, especially in logistics. In the Netherlands, for example, you have the electronic consignment note. But it is not a legal requirement for transport companies to work with such an electronic consignment note. According to Wendt, this does slow down innovation.

Information provision
Although adoption is slow, Wendt does believe that we will be dealing with connected and autonomous driving within the next 10 years. Decision-support technologies, in which AI will also play a role, will also take on a larger role.

For the logistics sector, he finds it more difficult to predict how things will go. This is because there are many small organizations and companies in this sector. “In terms of technology, you see real frontrunners, but also many companies that are only taking very small steps.”

“It will surprise you, but many SMEs that order something in China don't actually know where their container is.” In the coming years, everything will be more interconnected, thereby improving the provision of information for management, customers, and citizens. “To the extreme, just as you as a consumer now know exactly that your package will be delivered in half an hour.” According to Wendt, we are also heading in that direction in the business-to-business market. “By making the logistics chain more transparent, optimizations and better planning also become possible. Supported by AI and machine learning, there is much to be gained here. But quite a lot still needs to happen before we get that far.” To achieve this, all individual companies in the chain must be able to receive and share information in the right way, so that the entire chain is transparent. This is also the reason why we closely follow developments around federated data sharing and data spaces. Here, a widely supported and internationally coordinated standard is emerging, also for the logistics market, which will give the parties involved sufficient confidence to start sharing more data with each other!”

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