About the CRISTAL project
About the project
The Climate resilient and environmentally sustainable transport infrastructure, with a focus on inland waterways – CRISTAL Project, no: 101069838, founded by the EU under the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA).
The key objective of the CRISTAL project is to increase the share of freight transport on inland water transport (IWT) by a minimum of 20% and to demonstrate on its three pilot sites (Italy, Poland and France) strategies to improve reliability by 80%. CRISTAL project will assure IWT capacity at 50% even during extreme weather events.
Towards that CRISTAL will co-create, test and implement integrated, cooperative and innovative solutions in its three pilot partners’ areas identified in Italy, France and Poland.
The project will include the aspects of technological innovation/development and digitalization.
Further advancement towards the Physical Internet, governance solution and business models, will be proposed while targeting sustainability and infrastructure resilience requirements.
OBJECTIVES AND AMBITION
The key objective of the CRISTAL project is to increase the share of freight transport on inland water transport (IWT) by a minimum of 20% and to demonstrate on its three pilot sites (Italy, Poland and France) strategies to improve reliability by 80%.The project objectives, results and verification means are presented in the following sections
Figure: The main dependencies that have been identified between the CRISTAL WPs
The CRISTAL project will deploy the sensor equipped buoys to monitor depth to determine the water level which will be used by infrastructure managers in conjunction with their DSS RIS-Layer to determine the level of water under keel.
This informs new business models for improved IWT implementation into intermodal chains, sensors to support preventive infrastructure monitoring, sensors to support the structural health monitoring of existing infrastructure, a Decision Support System webGIS platform for creating awareness and promoting capacity building towards an effective disaster resilient management, a toolbox for synchromodal resource planning, and cooperative operations preparation integrated to the synchromodal corridor management system.
Objective area 1: Development of pathway towards 20% market share increase and 80% reliability
- Key result 1: Roadmaps for needed developments and related administrative and regulatory framework, including the development of business and governance models, to achieve the targeted 20% market share growth – identification of information and infrastructure needs as well as data exchange and operational management requirements.
- Key result 2: A synchro/multi-modal corridor management system for the use of all involved actors (public authorities, logistics/mobility operators, passengers) and especially those parties responsible for crisis management and civil protection, for ensuring on-time shipments (and continuity of passenger transport) via IWT even in calamities situations in a minimum of 80% of cases.
- Key result 3: Governance, business models and finance structures, technological developments and organizational models to ensure sustainable improvements for a successful implementation of the Good Navigation Status
Objective area 2: Use of state-of-the-art technologies, including digitalization, to increase the operability and resilience of infrastructure, and assure 50% capacity during extreme weather situations
- Key result 4: Real-time monitoring system of water levels, hydrological conditions, infrastructure maintenance and resilience level, including a River Information Services (RIS)-Layer in which the collected data will be made available to the barge and surveillance operators.
- Key result 5: A digital twin incorporating real-time data (key result 4) and weather data for an infrastructure early warning and infrastructure maintenance system, as well as to support corridor management.
- Key result 6: Exploitation of existing platform networks (e.g. https://fenix-network.eu/) to facilitate the interoperability among systems and the secured data and information exchange for supporting synchro/multimodality along a corridor.
- Governance, business models and finance structures, technological developments and organizational models to ensure sustainable improvements for a successful implementation of the Good Navigation Status
Objective area 3: Implementation of state-of-the-art technologies (objective area 2) and market share increase strategy (objective area 1) in the pilots` regions as basis for further Europe-wide roll-out for increased market share of IWT
- Key result 7: Applications to measure, in real time, the actual water levels and the IWT infrastructure maintenance and resilience by using novel subsurface inspection data to plan predictive maintenance and improving their resilience implemented, tested and validated in the three pilot regions.
- Key result 8: Completed implementation, testing and validation of the corridor management system, governance and technology innovations in the three pilot areas.
- Key result 9: Completed implementation, testing and validation of the digital twins of the three pilot regions: Poland, Italy and France.
- Governance, business models and finance structures, technological developments and organizational models to ensure sustainable improvements for a successful implementation of the Good Navigation Status
Objective area 4: Exploitation on local as well as European level and beyond
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- Key result 10 Roadmap for the improvement of IWT towards realization of (EC IWT Transaction Plan 2021-2027 and EC Digital Inland Waterway Area flagship developments on a strategic level (European level).
- Key result 11 Roadmap for individual pilot regions towards realization of flagship developments (pilot level).
- Key result 12 Roadmap for individual stakeholders (engineers, environmentalists, assets and risks managers, logistic & fleet professionals and trainers, procurement managers, organization managers, transport/logistic and land planning managers, policy makers) towards realization of flagship developments (individual organization level).
- Key result 13 Roadmap for financial sector towards realization of flagship developments (individual organization level), in line with the EC Taxonomy, taking into account the results of the “Maritime taxonomy.
Facts & Figures
Project assumptions
Use of the latest technological solutions, such as automatic buoys, sensors monitoring the condition of the infrastructure, business models, a decision support system and an open data platform for synchromodal resource planning and operation preparation.
Project result
Another product will be a comprehensive real-time monitoring system for water levels and hydrological conditions, including RIS. The developed guidelines will be designed for use at local and European level and beyond.
Expected results
The products of the CRISTAL project will be ready-made guidelines for the creation of a synchromodal transport corridor management system in terms of regulation, administration, business models and management.
Expected results
The CRISTAL developed solutions are to redefine the logistics processes in inland navigation and fully recover its unused potential.