Futures Workshop "Urban Freight 2050: a systemic vision to urban freight logistics futures"

The European Foresight Platform (EFP) and partners kindly invites you to
participate in a policy workshop „Urban Freight 2050: a systemic vision to
urban freight logistics futures“, which will take place the 17th of December in Vienna, Austria. The Workshop will be hosted by the Federal State Agency AustriaTech and the AIT Foresight and Policy Development Department (AIT F&PD). The workshop will be organized cooperatively among TNO, AIT and AustriaTech and will be
supported by the Austrian Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology
(bmvit).

Transport and logistics are fundamental for economic development, growth and prosperity
of regions and urban environments worldwide. For Europe, efficient and
sustainable freight transport and logistics action are essential for participating competitively in the world economy and further maintaining a high
quality of provision for European industries and end-consumers. As stated by
the European Commission in the Transport 2050 White-paper (Roadmap to a Single
European Transport Area)  the European transport sector is facing a number
of challenges:

–  CO2 emissions from transport are still growing, despite cleaner vehicles,

–  transport is extremely dependent upon oil, while oil will becomes scarcer and
more expensive,

–  rising levels of congestion, while demand for mobility particularly for freight
transport is growing,

–  the European transport sector faces  a growing competition from other world
regions,

–  the European transport sector has to tranform into a ressource-efficient and
sustainable area of provision for achieving the CO2 reduction targets commited by the European Community.

Most of the road maps, action plans and research priorities  focus on realizing future
technological solutions and service innovations for challenges recognized
today. These solutions have a strong todays technological and innovation focus and do in our opinion not sufficiently envison potential trends and developments in a farer distant
perspective. Todays visions on smart and intelligent, green and ressource efficent and safe and secure freight transport and matiblegame logistics would benefit from a thorough discussion on potential alternative futures, which are not easily to recognize from a present perspective. In this EFP futures workshop we will discuss from a systemic point of view potential futures for urban freight transport and logistics against the background of maybe different socio-economic futures. The discussion is structured by the use of provocative sketches of potential socio-economic futures framing transport and logistics in 2050.

The goals of this futures workshop are:

•   to specify a range of future visions on urban freight transport and logistics
based on the latest insights from forward-looking activities in general
and in the transport  domain;

•   to explore new views on developments in urban freight transport and logistics
against the background of different farhorizon future visions bringing in
alternative perspectives;

•   to discuss credibility, feasibility as well as the main drivers and barriers
towards these futures and the uptake of potential technological and service
innovations in these context;

•   and to suggest implications and requirements for policy action and measures
taking into account a long term perspective and with that a range of
alternative and visionary scenarios.

You are kindly invited to participate in this workshop and to bring your expertise and
experience into the discussion. A detailed agenda for this one day workshop
will follow Monday next week.

You can notify interest and register for the urban freight futures workshop by sending
name and contact details to Ms. Beatrice Rath beatrice.rath@ait.ac.at