31 Jul Sustainable logistics in Emilia-Romagna: the challenge of smart cities

According to 2021 data in Emilia-Romagna, the logistics-related supply chain has a turnover of 13 billion euros, has 9,900 companies and employs about 80,500 people. The sector has a non-negligible social and environmental impact and is often linked to traditional and labor intensive logics.

Large logistics hubs such as ports and interports form the main nodes of an increasingly complex and expanding trading network. Optimizing their integration within the urban fabric with a view to smart cities is one of the potential challenges facing those who manage these veritable ecosystems and policy makers who want to align with the directives of the European Green Deal.

To date, there are many technologies available and, as emerged from the discussion during the speech organized by Tecnopolo Bologna CNR in the context of the R2B 2023 fair, there is a need to connect and harmonize them in order to build effective and modern decision making tools.

The discussion entitled “Sustainable Logistics and Urban Resilience,” moderated by Francesco Lolli, Associate Professor of the Department of Engineering Science and Methods at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, involved:

• Giuseppe Dall’Asta, director of Interporto Bologna Spa;
• Francesco Santoro, researcher at MISTER Smart Innovation;
• Alessandro Seravalli, director of GeoSmart.Lab;
• Francesco Suriano, researcher at Proambiente.

During the discussion, the great potential rel

ated to digital twins of urban areas and traffic microsimulations (in the literature called microscopic simulations) when properly integrated and validated with environmental and traffic big data was emphasized.

Traffic microsimulations are among the most technologically accurate and advanced forecasting tools in the transportation and mobility sector; in fact, they allow what-if analyses between different scenarios such as, for example, the implementation of infrastructure works or major events. They differ from mesoscopic and macroscopic simulations because they aim to reproduce in detail the behavior of each flow agent (i.e., vehicles and pedestrians) within a network. The latter is one of the essential ingredients for the simulations themselves to be plausible and reliable.

Data involving traffic and air and noise pollution are a great asset and can be used to effectively validate traffic microsimulations; however, those available are often insufficient and heterogeneous in terms of format. Therefore, outdoor measurement campaigns that can monitor the territory and road network adaptively, that is, by increasing the number of sensors and the quality of readings near key nodes in the road network,

and that, by exploiting software infrastructure, can collect and standardize data, are strategic.

Simulated data and real data that constitute a real asset for the planning of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS, in this case, solutions to restore the functionality of ecosystems altered by humans) aimed at mitigating the environmental impact, present and future, of large logistics hubs that, only with a more ecosystemic vision, can be better integrated into a resilient urban fabric.