Climate-sensitive decision support for freight transport planning and policy making

Purpose and goal

Our aim is to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from freight transport through a new climate-sensitive decision support tool for authorities that plan, operate and control the transport system. The tool utilizes advanced AI technologies. Supporting authorities to improve the capacity and operation of transport modes with low greenhouse gas emissions enables a transition from high emission modes. Providing decision-makers with decision support delivering high-resolution transport analyzes enables effective climate-relevant transport policy instruments.

Expected effects and result

This project informs Trafikverket’s climate-relevant freight transport investments, instruments and policies. Policy measures such as taxes or fees aim directly at changing the behaviors of logistics and transport service providers. Changing transport infrastructure, operations and costs may prompt firms to adopt less transport-intensive processes. Within the project, a solution for Sweden is demonstrated. Thanks to the AI-based inference of critical modeling data, a transferal to most other industrialized regions or countries is possible.

Planned approach and implementation

The project develops a next-generation freight transport model that models the movements of individual vehicles with second resolution and calculates their greenhouse gas emissions. It is carried out jointly by the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (coordination and freight model development), Linköping university (AI-based model inference), the non-profit organization Network for Transport Measures (emission modeling), and Trafikverket (problem owner).