Evaluation of transportation systems, intermodality/multimodality and social equity

Transport systems are key facilitators of economic activities and of social connectivity. While these supply essential services to society, transport systems are also at the centre of major sustainability challenges, such as climate change, energy and environmental efficiency, public health, social equity, economic competitiveness and an efficient use of resources. In practice, these dimensions represent a "complex engineering problem”, thus requiring advanced methods and tolls from other social science areas.   

Maritime transport represents 80% of the world trade and 40% of the intra-european freight traffic is realized by short-sea shipping. For optimizing the design of multimodal logistic chains, the Transport White Paper of the European Commission envisages a transfer of 30% of freight to rail or maritime transport, for distances over 300 km. Maritime ports represent an important role as logistic nodes and require efficient infrastructures. As such, the development of intermodal transport systems without discontinuities (seamless transport) is at the centre of economic competitiveness.

This research line integrates key issues for transport economic and maritime economics, focusing on a) Long distance intermodal transport solutions (maritime transport, short-sea shipping, road transport, rail transport, air transport, other modes) and its optimization along the various dimensions of sustainability; b) sustainability impact analysis of new maritime transport-inland waterways solutions for the designated blue cities, anchors of the economics of the sea, including the study of its combination with other transport modes, namely with walking and cycling and electric vehicles.