Activity leader: Swedish Maritime Administration

The aim of this Activity is to develop Pilots and Living Labs in order to address aspects related to the development of a federative network of platforms that encompasses existing platforms, processes and investments in line with the requirements defined in the Interim Master Plan. In general:

• Pilot projects comprise the development and testing of some generic components in a limited and linear environment (simplified – closed system development and testing).
• Living labs comprise the development and testing of interrelated components in an open and dynamic environment (complex - comprises economical, organizational – including various management levels involvement, social, and technical impact of innovation).

In order to ensure the further implementation and use federative network of platforms concept by stakeholders, the concept needs to be validated through Pilots and Living Labs and prove its sustainability. It is necessary to first further detail the requirements and validate the proposed solution in a real environment setting.

To this end the Pilots and Living Labs will develop and validate particular concepts in a controlled environment as well as provide a more dynamic approach for testing the interoperability potential of existing legacy IT systems and platforms. The individual Living Labs and Pilots will validate the core operating framework and the design principles of the FEDeRATED Interim Master Plan.

The Pilots and Living Labs concern both public administration processes in e.g. the monitoring and control of the movement of transport means and goods as well as logistics processes related to e.g. the tracking and tracing of cargo and planning tools. Overall, the logistic chain operators, - shippers, transporters (inland navigation, road, rail, aviation), forwarders and terminal operators – will be represented in the pilots/living labs, Some Pilots and Living Labs will focus on specific roles, platforms and services while others will address the more specific aspects related for example to governance requirements.

Each partner will be actively engaged in one or more Pilots / Living Labs. The general scope of the different Pilots and Living Labs is to ensure that the four design principles of a federated network of platforms, all transport sectors and additional public administration sectors such as Customs are covered as a minimum. The pilots and Living Labs will be implemented in most of the Corridors.

The scope of the pilots and Living Labs will include but not limit to the following functionality and features addressing:

Network/system aspects:

• Authentication, Identification and Authorisation protocol exchange mechanism;
• Cyber security;
• Automated data sharing;
• Blockchain;
• Single reporting, multiple use;
• Data confidentiality;
• Unique ID for the cargo unit linked to a transport operation and valid for all transport modes;
• Integrity;
• Usability;
• Scalability;
• Data model and interoperability of IT solutions and standards;
• Governance: Mutually agreed rules; Non-discriminatory engagement; Data governance; Business model; Economies of scale and network effect; Trust, safe and secure.

 The role of the public administration:

• Data sharing with non-EU countries such as Singapore & China;
• Land-sea interfaces extending DUEPORT functionality (reporting to maritime and Customs authorities) to road and rail;
• Paperless Inland Navigation (incl. data mapping);
• Border crossing services (APIs, historical data, safety and security options to supply chain parties to define data visibility) in the Baltic region;
• Support to eFTI development, i.e. e-CMR (sharing of standardized “shipment” and “transport” datasets);
• End2End Supply Chain connectivity.

The transport operations:

• Use of the e-CMR for road transport for air-cargo related transports;
• Integration of e-CMR and e-AWB data for multi-modal planning;
• Intra- and inter-hub efficiency over several modes of transport;
• Digital infrastructures for hub and carrier activity;
• Maritime-Rail hinterland corridor connections;
• Use of Shift-2-Rail, Sea Traffic Management (with Port Collaborative Decision Making (PortCDM)), Digital railway and MMID;
• Optimization of intermodal operation of trailers and semi-trailers inside the terminal area and along the last miles operations (including import and export Customs procedures);
• Digitalized transport document process
• Autonomous maritime systems;
• Real Time Performance Monitoring System for naval monitoring

The logistics processes:

• Automated cargo planning;
• Transport Management System (TMS) for full loads (related to road and intermodal traffic), TMS for distribution and less than full loads (sea / air and road traffic) and Warehouse Management System (WMS);
• Cargo dispatching;
• Automatic planning system for regular and irregular flows directly connected with logistics hubs IT platforms;
• Automatic dispatching of an autonomous driving vehicle (shunting service);
• Monitoring the goods flow in real time (tracing system);
• Optimizing the slots booking phase within the terminals;
• Register all advancement states of a certain load unit within the entire transport chain (within the terminal and on the network). tracking of load units
• Interconnection of the monitoring and control tools of moving goods in the logistics chain, including the instruments used for non-intrusive control and tracking and tracing of goods

The following types of platforms are envisaged to be subject of the pilots and Living Labs as follows:

- Platforms related to public administration:

• Maritime Single Windows;
• Infrastructure resource management;
• Traffic management (e.g. STM, TAF/TSI, RIS);
• Vehicle registration control systems
• Customs; 

- Platforms related to transport operations:

• Port Community Systems;
• Transport Management Systems (TMS);
• Warehouse Management Systems (WMS);
• Global shippers and forwarders (sender of the goods).

 Platforms related to the provision of logistics services:

• Cargo Community Systems.

The partners will develop Pilots/Living Labs also with other stakeholders in EU Member States and non-EU States (e.g. China, Singapore, India) under the provision that the costs for these other stakeholders are not eligible The selection criteria of the stakeholders to participate in the development of Pilots/Living Labs will comprise but not limit to the type of platforms, transport operations and logistic processes relevant to validate the Interim Master Plan.

The Pilots / Living Labs will vary from testing of individual aspects to large-scale multi-corridor, multi-sector and multi-functionality. With respect to resource allocation, beneficiaries and stakeholders roles, number and final scope of the pilots/Living Labs, the Activity is to an extent dependent on the key issues identified through Activities 1 and 2. The scoping will be defined in a report Testing and Living Lab Scope, mid 2020. The final results will be published in 2023.

The Activity is divided into 2 sub-activities:

• Sub-activity 3.1: Generic components development

The aim of this sub-activity is to develop components and functionality that have been identified in the technical architecture (sub activity 2.2). The components aim to support the validation of the requirements developed in the Master Plan. The components, possibly developed by specific pilots, are also required in setting up the Living Labs. These components will be developed via the appropriate IT system development management procedures – i.e. a Continuous Integration and Development (CI/CD) framework - and tested for deployment. These tests will be conducted to support requirements formulated by the various Living Labs, as to allow the CD/CI components and services to be implemented by the beneficiaries and stakeholders in each of the Living Labs.

This will be done through:

• the Mapping of the Living Lab functionalities and architecture against the technical architecture of the Master Plan. Living labs will address multimodal logistics and supply chains but can be also transport mode specific and (in most cases) must be adapted to country specific digital infrastructure and regulation;
• Identifying components and their functionality required by each Living Lab;
• Development (CI/CD) of these components and their functionality;
• Identifying pilot components (when appropriate)
• Testing and implementing relevant technological solutions for interoperability between the individual beneficiaries and/ or stakeholders taking part in living labs as well as between the respective living labs (e.g. based on a blockchain technology) according requirements of individual stakeholders within a Living Lab in accordance with the technical architecture (sub-activity 2.2). 

• Sub-activity 3.2: Living Labs

The aim of this sub-activity is to develop Living Labs as innovation environments for validation of the solution. The Living Labs provide feedback to components CI/CD. Synergies between the various Living Labs will be sought, according the aforementioned four design principles of a federative network of platforms.

The sub-activity and Living Labs will involve and meet as a minimum the following requirements:

• Beneficiaries and stakeholder engagement, - participation, and - management;
• Defining SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely) and functionalities of the Living Labs;
• Registration of beneficiaries and stakeholder (distributed Registries);
• Access Points for interoperability between IT systems and the federative network of platforms. Any data transformations have to be constructed by individual stakeholders. Potentially, these Access Points support a Graphical User Interface (GUI) as an application on a smart device;
• The federative network of platforms concept (and services) for B2A, B2A, A2A and B2B data sharing;
• Multimodal (road, rail, etc.) data applicability (re-use).

Living Labs will be developed and organised by the beneficiaries to incorporate one or more of the following:

• Physical cross-border B2A data exchange issues (across core network and corridors);
• Identification, authentication and integrity issues (including certification);
• Elaboration on governance issues;
• B2B data exchange issues in an open and neutral environment;
• Common Living Labs to demonstrate seamless use of platform services;
• National Living Labs to address the further processing of data within (national) authority systems for re-use. 

Common Living Labs are conducted by two or more Beneficiaries. National Living Labs are conducted by individual Beneficiaries. In all cases the experiences and results will be made available to all Beneficiaries. The Living Labs will be used to validate the functional, technical and possibly organisational requirements and specifications developed under Activity 2 (Master Plan) through the assessment of the Pilots and Living Labs regarding the appropriateness and viability of the issues addressed in the Master Plan.