IMPULSO – Integrated Multimodal Platform for Urban and Extra-Urban Logistic System Optimization

START DATE: April 1, 2011 END DATE: March 30, 2012

The IMPULSO project proposes a solution for integrating City Logistics with Extra-Urban Freight Transport and is one of the projects financed by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development within the framework of the Industry 2015 – Sustainable Mobility Programme.

The main objective of IMPULSO is to propose and test solutions to optimize freight transport through the creation of an integrated logistics management prototype that covers both medium/long-haul and metropolitan freight transport management.

In IMPULSO, freight transport and distribution are organized according to a traffic model integrated with logistics systems (both existing and to be developed) for medium-to-long-haul transport and city logistics, which is based on the existence of specific hub areas:

• Interports (Intermodal Hubs): Hub areas for the exchange of goods between long-haul and medium-haul transport.

• Metropolitan Distribution Centers (CDM): Located at the limits of the metropolitan area, they receive goods from the interports and manage their transfer to urban storage areas.

• District Buffers (DB): Urban areas for temporary storage of goods, from which they are collected using low-environmental-impact vehicles for local distribution.

IMPULSO consists of a set of ICT and infrastructural components:

• Dedicated transport components – hardware and software

• Specific infotelematics systems for long-haul intermodal logistics

• Specific infotelematics systems for metropolitan logistics

• Collaboration and communication components and systems.