Tag Archive for: Transport

Shipping and Logistics Needs Protection from Cyber Threat After Costly Attacks

Following the extremely costly cyber attacks on the Maersk, Clarkson and COSCO operations this year the Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO) has gathered together some heavy hitting stakeholders from the legal and logistics sectors to help in drafting its first ever cyber security clause for the benefit of ship owners and other related freight and shipping interests.

Inga Froysa of chartering specialist Klaveness, Oslo is leading a team which includes Navig8 ship management, marine insurance experts the UK P&I Club and international lawyers HFW. The aim is to produce a clause able to deal with cyber security risks and incidents that might affect the ability of one of the parties to perform their contractual obligations. It will necessitate the parties having plans and procedures in place capable of protecting computer systems and data and of responding immediately to any cyber intrusions.

An affected party will have to inform others immediately to enable them to take counter-measures and it will be drafted to cover a range of stakeholders, not just ship operators but inclusive of a range of third-party service providers, such as brokers and agents. The liability of the parties to each other for claims is limited to an amount agreed during negotiations. A sum of $100,000 will apply if no other amount is inserted.

The range of the clause is twofold, firstly it is aimed at raising the awareness of cyber risks among owners, charterers and brokers. Its main purpose is to ensure contracted parties are prepared for a cyber-incident, have suitable protective and reactive measures and can mitigate any damage swiftly. The new clause is due to be published in May 2019.

In the early stages of development, the drafting team discussed if the clause should also address payment fraud. It was concluded that the risk of this increasingly common fraud is probably best dealt with at a procedural level by companies tightening up their internal payment procedures to require verification of any changes to payment details.

The HFW legal team working on the clause is led by senior associate William MacLachlan and also includes partners Elinor Dautlich and Toby Stephens and associate Henry Clack. William MacLachlan observed:

“As the shipping industry wrestles with how to respond to the cyber threat, this clause aims to lay down a benchmark for cyber security measures and explicitly address the question of liability for a cyber security incident. We are pleased to have been able to support BIMCO, the other members of the drafting sub-committee and the shipping community generally on this important and topical point, and look forward to seeing how it is taken up and implemented by the industry.”

Source: Handy Shipping Guide

Nearly €245 million awarded to Horizon 2020 transport projects

INEA has signed grant agreements with 39 projects selected for funding under two Horizon 2020 calls – Mobility for Growth and Automated Road Transport respectively. They will receive a total of €243.8 million.

Most of the funding – some €200 million – will go to 36 projects selected under Mobility for Growth.

The remaining amount will go to three projects under Automated Road Transport.

The projects are expected to use research and innovation on equipment and systems for vehicles, aircraft and maritime vessels that will make them smarter, cleaner, safer, and more automated.

Projects will also focus on research on road users’ safety, sustainable mobility in urban areas and “smart electric mobility” in cities, improvement of the logistics systems’ performance, and resilience and optimisation of transport infrastructure.

They are expected to start their activities by 1 September 2018 at the latest.

Project examples:

Enabling safe multi-brand truck platooning for Europe

The main goal of the ENSEMBLE project is to pave the way for the adoption of multi-brand truck platooning in Europe to improve fuel economy, traffic safety and throughput. This will be demonstrated by driving six differently branded trucks (DAF, DAIMLER, IVECO, MAN, SCANIA, VOLVO) in one or more platoon(s) under real world traffic conditions across national borders.

The following objectives are defined: a) Achieve safe platooning for trucks of different brands, b) work towards the standardisation and achieve interoperable platooning, and c) real-life platooning showing a multi-brand platoon in real traffic conditions.

ENSEMBLE brings the key actors for deployment together which are all major truck OEMs (98% of the market) supported by other organisations, key stakeholder groups and relevant suppliers. The expected impact is on a Europe wide deployment of platooning with multi-brand vehicles in real, mixed traffic conditions.

The project pursues making transparent the economic, societal and environmental impact of decisions of platoon forming and dissolving. It also aims to modernise the transport system by finding an optimal balance between fuel consumption, emission level, travel times, and impact on highway traffic flow. This, in turn, will result in reduced impacts on climate change, air pollution, noise, health and accidents.

Project title: ENabling SafE Multi-Brand pLatooning for Europe (ENSEMBLE)

Duration: 36 months (01/06/2018 – 31/05/2021)

Budget: €26 million

EC funding:  €20 million

Project Coordinator: TNO

Hierarchical multifunctional composites for the aviation industry

The HARVEST project will develop structural composites (based on innovative thermoset 3R – repair, recycle and reprocess), autonomous electric integrated system for health monitoring and a wireless data transmission system. The innovative materials will be manufactured in purposefully developed pilot lines aiming to cut production time and costs.

The proposed technologies will be finally integrated in two aircraft demonstrators, testing elements with different temperatures and in quick heat dissipation conditions.

Project title: Hierarchical multifunctional composites with thermoelectrically powered autonomous structural health monitoring for the aviation industry (HARVEST)

Duration: 36 months (01/09/2018 – 31/08/2021)

Budget: €4 million

EC funding:  €4 million

Project Coordinator: 11 partners from 6 countries coordinated by University of Ioannina (Greece)

Charging infrastructure for electric vehicles

The GreenCharge project will empower cities and municipalities to make the transition to zero emissions and sustainable mobility. It will use innovative business models and technologies, and will provide guidelines for cost efficient and successful deployment and operation of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.

Inspired by ideas from the sharing economy, the business models will focus on enabling the mutualisation of excess capacity of private RES, private charging facilities and the batteries of parked electric vehicles. Pilots will be carried out in Barcelona, Bremen and Oslo to demonstrate and evaluate the proposed approach.

Project title: GREENCHARGE

Duration: 36 months (01/09/2018 – 31/08/2021)

Budget: approx. €5.7 million

EC funding:  €5 million

Project Coordinator: 16 partners from 6 countries coordinated by SINTEF AS (Norway)

Enabling the transferability of cycling innovations

The HANDSHAKE project supports the effective take up of the integrated cycling solutions successfully developed by Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Munich, Cycling Capitals and world-renowned cycling front runners, to 10 highly committed Future Cycling Capitals: Bordeaux Metropole, Bruges, Cadiz, Dublin, Helsinki, Krakow, Greater Manchester, Riga, Rome and Turin.

The project strategic objectives are: to inspire the creation or refinement of holistic cycling visions and concrete transfer approaches; to foster the adoption of a multidisciplinary planning culture to consolidate future cycling policies and investments; to allow cycling to become a key element of urban transport; to improve cycling modal share and safety; to leverage the potential of cycling as a critical congestion relief tool; to leverage cycling to improve public health; to foster economic growth.

HANDSHAKE expects to improve cycling attractiveness by +52% and competitiveness by 17%, shift ca. 60.000 people to cycling with +34% in frequency of cycling use, traffic levels lowered by 6,34%,and CO2 savings of -3.706.000 kg CO2/year.

Project title: Enabling the transferability of cycling innovations and assessment of its implications (HANDSHAKE)

Duration: 42 months (01/09/2018 – 28/02/2022)

Budget: approx. €5 million

EC funding:  €4.8 million

Project Coordinator: 19 partners from 12 countries coordinated by ISINNOVA (Italy)

How were the projects selected for EU funding?

The submitted proposals were evaluated by external experts drawn from the European Commission’s independent expert database. Grant agreements were signed with the successful applicants within eight months of the submission deadline.

How will the projects be managed?

The projects are each implemented by a consortium of European partners. INEA will monitor their progress throughout the entire project life-cycle.

Overall, €12.2 billion has been earmarked for transport and energy research in Horizon 2020, the main EU’s funding programme for the 2014-2020 period. €5.3 billion of this amount will be managed by INEA resulting in approximately 800 projects.

Source: INEA

More than 40 European associations come together to claim more investment for transport

These associations consider that “a larger EU budget for investment for transport is the best plan for Europe”.

More than 40 European associations representing the transport sector and sectors linked to this activity have signed the so-called Ljubljana Declaration, a document in which they demand more investment in transport within the EU budget after 2020. This took place during the celebration of the European TEN-T Days, the most important annual meeting of European Transport Corridors held from Wednesday to Friday in the capital of Slovenia, the place of origin of the European Transport Commissioner, Violeta Bulc.

The document, which was published on Thursday, calls on European policy makers to increase the EU budget for the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) in order to facilitate the completion of the main network, which will require 500,000 million euros between 2021 and 2030. The associations consider that the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) “establishes the right priorities in terms of sustainability and cohesion and can contribute to solving the current transport challenges”. “Investing in TEN-T projects has a particularly high European added value,” says the document.

They also request that the investment be focused on ” better and more innovative transport”. To achieve this, it proposes to accelerate “investments in digital, innovative and sustainable transport projects” to move towards a “more ecological, truly integrated, modern, accessible to all, more secure and efficient” transport system.

The associations propose that the EU “continue to provide subsidies” to finance transport projects at the core of the TEN-T network. “The subsidies are essential to complete the network,” explains the document, which states that “most transport projects with high socioeconomic value do not generate enough income to cover the total investment costs.”

The Ljubljana Declaration concludes with a plea in favour of CEF funds, which are “essential to complete the TEN-T network and attain ecological transport, which will benefit all Europeans”. “An insufficient budget for transport will jeopardise the completion of the TEN-T basic network. A larger EU budget for transport is the best investment plan for Europe, ” states the document.

Source: El Vigia

 

The European Parliament focuses on working conditions in the transport sector

The processing of the new legislative package on the road is complicated, but the sector will defend the application of specific regulations and not the Directive for posted workers.

To move towards an integrated mobility system in Europe, with an automated procedure for collecting and circulating data between operators, professionals, users and administrations, it is necessary to harmonize working conditions in the transport sector.

This is one of the main ideas presented by the MEP Izaskun Bilbao during the Road Transport Seminar held in mid-April at the European Parliament’s headquarters in Madrid, where she stressed that the Directive for posted workers is not adapted to the variables that define this activity.

In Bilbao’s opinion, the profession of a professional driver has experienced “a degradation of their working and social conditions” in recent years, which was motivated by a non-specific regulatory framework and by its heterogeneous application in the different Member States. All this has led to a serious problem of ‘social dumping’ and excessive protectionism, increasing both the fragmentation of the market and the administrative burdens to which transport is subjected to.

The processing of the new legislative package of the road appears, in his opinion, complicated, but the sector will call for a specific regulation, and not the Directive created specifically for displaced workers.

Decarbonization and the European Single Window

In this context, the MEP denounced “the precariousness that is being installed in the sector” and that puts road safety at risk, as well as the objectives of decarbonisation and the possibility for workers to improve their skills related to the technological revolution.

In the short term, it is “urgent” to give visibility to the European commitment to sustainability and implement global regulatory frameworks that are accompanied by local measures. He also referred to the creation of a European Agency to regulate this mode of transport before 2025, in particular the European single window, the implementation of which will significantly reduce administrative burdens.

Source: Cadena de Suministro