The steadily growing demand related to increasing urbanisation is turning the management of logistics flows in urban areas a more complex process, with higher demand for adaptability and flexibility for the new solutions to contribute to optimise the overall transport capacity, reducing operational costs and negative impacts (health, safety). URBANIZED develops and demonstrates the next generation of modular vehicle architectures for urban-sized commercial e-vehicles, satisfying design principles of optimisation and right-sizing vehicles for their mission, delivering outputs in 3 dimensions: 1) high-performance e-powertrain components and control architectures, through the use of advanced co-design approaches; 2) interchangeable, plug & play cargo modules for different urban freight transport use case scenarios and 3) integrated energy and fleet management strategies using data, connectivity and learning algorithms. URBANIZED follows a holistic design approach working at 3 levels (systems, vehicle, fleet) during the entire project: starting with the definition of specific mission profiles within 2 main pre-selected use cases (last-mile delivery of retail, e-commerce, courier and post; HoReCa and other urban on-demand services), during the optimisation loops of the design process, and until project demonstrations, to be performed both physical and in virtual environments, covering the specific requirements of operators. URBANIZED brings a complementary multi-disciplinary consortium of 9 partners from 6 EU countries, involving all relevant actors from the value chain, from academic, to industrial (TIER1, OEMs) and logistics operators. Aiming at broadening dissemination and impact, URBANIZED defines an extended partnership, involving 3 satellite cities (Groningen, Madrid and Bergen) committed to CO2-emissions free logistics in their city centres by 2030 and a high volume OEM (Ford) highly positioned in the LCV market, all interested in replicability of project results.

CodeZERO is a three-year project aiming to co-create sustainable and zero-emission last-mile delivery and return solution for e-commerce that are also attractive to consumers. It is articulated in four phases: -An ANALYSIS phase which provides (1) an analysis of existing delivery and return options and an understanding of how they are shaped by the needs and constraints of all involved stakeholders; (2) an in-depth intersectional analysis of various groups of on-line consumers to understand what are the features of delivery and return options making them attractive, with the aim to identify mechanisms to incentivize behaviour changes; and (3) develops an assessment framework to measure the impacts in the environmental, economic and social domains of new solutions. -A DESIGN phase, in which CodeZERO engages in a co-design process involving retailers, transport operators, consumers and local authorities in developing (1) guidelines for retailers to raise awareness among customers; (2) a set of zero-emission and sustainable delivery and return options for retailers and transport operators; and (3) a toolset for local authorities to accelerate the transition towards sustainable solutions in last mile consignments in e-commerce. -A TEST phase running 4 pilots in 4 different European cities in Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway to test a set of sustainable solutions identified in the previous phase with the aim to prove their feasibility, to fine-tune their design and to assess their impacts from the perspective of all stakeholders. -A CONSOLIDATION phase where (1) CodeZERO outcomes are fine-tuned based on the lessons learned from real life applications, (2) requirements for up-scaling of solutions at European level are discussed (3) recommendations are formulated and (4) directions for future research are outlined. Engagement with consumers and retailers’ associations, industry stakeholders, cities and researchers contributes to shaping its results.

PARSEC is a project about parcel and letter security in the context of postal and express courier services. The project delivers an ambitious set of solutions by developing, configuring, customising, and piloting innovative tools, services and security management views to fight the abuse of postal and express courier flows for criminal and terrorist purposes. The four PARSEC innovation areas and three use cases strengthen risk analysis and redefine threat detection and resilience capabilities of parcel service providers, customs authorities, police agencies, and other relevant stakeholders. PARSEC develops and tests three next-generation non-intrusive detection technologies (multi-energy photon counting detector, neutron-induced gamma-ray spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction) and combine them into a detection architecture (= system-of-system) for optimal detection accuracy, speed and reliability. With PARSEC solutions postal and express operators, customs, and police authorities will be more capable to fight crime and terrorism, put in place a stronger deterrent, and to ensure safe and undisrupted postal and express services.

A consortium led by 3 municipalities (pilot cities) committed to zero emissions city logistics (Bremen, Mechelen, Groningen) has joined forces with logistics stakeholders, both established (e.g. UPS) and new comers (e.g. ViaVan) as well as leading academic institutions in EU to accelerate the deployment of novel, feasible, shared and ZE solutions addressing major upcoming challenges generated by the rising on-demand economy in future urban logistics. To do so, the ULaaDS project will work on 3 key focus pillars: i) co-creation process to model future on-demand scenarios for urban logistics and definition of relevant ULaaDS delivery solutions through novel toolkit; ii) deployment of 2 ULaaDS solutions co-created (combining new delivery vehicles and novel horizontal collaboration models) through a total of 6 multistakeholder research trials in the 3 pilot cities; iii) assessment of feasible value cases towards urban planning integration (SUMP/SULP). The ULaaDS solutions will be designed complying with a framework of requirements highly aligned with the call topic and ETP ALICE research priorities. The 3 pilot cities propose 2 preliminary ULaaDS solutions building upon their SotA activities solutions to be further concretised through first project pillar: 1) modular innovative cargobikes operated by crowdsourced couriers to enhance logistics efficiency and multimodality in city centres; 2) integration of urban dual transport services (high on-demand distribution requirements of small goods with on-demand shared personal transport - eVans offering pooling for cargo, semiAGVs, public transport) Finally, ULaaDS also involves 4 other satellite cities (Rome, Edinburgh, L’Hospitalet, Bergen) which will also apply the novel toolkit created in ULaaDS as well as the overall project methodology to co-create additional ULaaDS solutions relevant to their cities as well as outlines for potential research trials. ULaaaDS is a project proposal part of ETP ALICE Liaison program.