SDG-week seminar: Resilience and sustainability through multimodality on freight transport
The transport network in Europe and in particular the Baltics is facing severe and frequent disruptions due to the dynamic geo-political situation in the region as well as aftereffects of climate change. The EU Horizon project ReMuNet (Resilient Multimodal Transport Networks) is focused on improving the resilience of the transport network considering alternate routing options and identifying disruptions and ways to mitigate their effects.
The webinar is in two parts, describing the social sciences and humanities approach towards resilient and sustainable transportation, which is led by Hanken in the consortium. The project uses multimodality as a moderating factor in the face of disruptions, allowing for transport networks to minimize impact and increase robustness.
In the first part of this session, the results of a qualitative study are described which 1) define disruptions from the perspective of logistics operators and key stakeholders, 2) identify the frequently occurring and severe disruptions and 3) understand standard practices of managing these disruptions. A series of 20 interviews (1 hour each) were conducted with infrastructure managers, logistics operators, government agencies, and other stakeholders in the EU transport network. The people represented different modes (links) and nodes of the transport chain including ports, inland waterway management, freight shipping handlers, network planners, terminal operators across rail, road, air, and waterway transport. The analysis of the interviews included classification of disruptions based on severity of impact, cause, and length (time duration) of impact. The research also investigates the resilience of different modes of transport and estimates the stakeholder’s perception on their reliability.
In the second part of the webinar, the case study for delivering humanitarian aid to Ukraine through the North-Sea Baltic corridor is discussed. The work on the case study led by Hanken begins with the study of 4 types of conflicts: intrastate, internationalized intrastate, interstate, and extra-systemic. Since the cold war, conflicts have taken on a far more complex ‘new wars’ existence based on the fallout of globalization leading to the fragmentation of states compared to ‘old wars’ which were considered far more straight forward and based on battles with the aim of gaining territory. In fact, the Ukraine conflict relates far more closely to the old wars style. Today, however, the dynamics are different as there is an increasing disregard for international humanitarian law and international human rights law creating a reduced space for humanitarian operations, amplified sharing of disinformation, targeted attacks on humanitarians, an advancement of technology, and upsurge in the availability of weapons. In order to respond to the humanitarian needs derived from such conflict settings, an effective and efficient response is achieved through logistics and supply chain management.
Read more about the ReMuNet-project here.
