CRISTAL

/ CRISTAL

The CRISTAL project focuses on the development of inland waterway transport (IWT) and its infrastructure on smaller and commercially undeveloped feedwater routes. They are key to expanding Europe’s waterway system.

The crucial aim of the project is to create an innovative technology for monitoring and digitization of transport chains, indicating the direction of further development of business and management models that include river transport in multimodal chains.

The project consists of three pilot sites (Poland, Italy and France) which will initiate a step change from the current system, concerning the inland water infrastructures asset management, towards the ultimate vision of the Physical Internet linked to the sustainability and resilience concepts; by synchronizing intermodal services between modes and shippers (referred to as “Synchromodality”), aligning equipment and services on corridors and hubs as well as integrating these into networks. These aspects will tackle the sustainability and infrastructure resilience requirements.

CRISTAL’s objectives and targeted key results are

Development of pathway towards 20% market share increase and 80% reliability.

Use of state-of-the-art technologies, including digitalization, to increase the operability and resilience of infrastructure, and assure 50% capacity during extreme weather conditions barriers for R&D deployment identify and define.

Implementation of state-of-the-art technologies and market share increase strategy in the pilots as basis for further Europe-wide roll-out for increased market share of IWT.

Exploitation and valorization of results on local as well as European levels and beyond.

ALICE as partner of the project will focus on 2 key innovation areas which are fully aligned with the PI roadmap and activities, thus contributing to enriching its members knowledge and to sharing key results and outcomes among the network.

The 2 key innovation areas are:

A corridor visibility and open data platform integrated to the synchromodal corridors management system (SCMS).

The SCMS strives to enhance transportation operations through real-time information, dynamic planning, and optimal resource utilization. Its primary objective is to make transportation more efficient, cost-effective, and seamless by considering the needs of multiple commodities and stakeholders.
Synchromodal resource planning and cooperative operations preparation integrated to the synchromodal corridor management system:

The SCMS will develop and/or integrate available existing tools for supporting the cooperation among IWW actors and the optimal use of resources in the context of the synchromodal planning of operations such as cargo bundling services or warehouse on demand services.

Why ALICE is part of CRISTAL and what is its role?

The CRISTAL results will contribute to strengthening ALICE and its members’ knowledge base within the Inland Waterways transport. ALICE will support identifying and sharing challenges and opportunities to increase the use of Inland Waterways. ALICE will support linking relevant initiatives and projects, creating synergies and addressing interdependencies between stakeholders; particularly to sharing user-needs with IWT sector stakeholders. ALICE will further support assessing and addressing how CRISTAL innovations can support the increase the of use of Inland Waterways Transport for freight within Cargo Owners (manufacturers, retailers), transportation companies, freight forwarders, logistics companies, terminals and hubs.