As natural disasters become more frequent in the wake of climate change, and the risks of pandemics and geopolitical conflicts are ever-present, the threat of disruptive events to the European transport network is growing. In 2021 alone, economic losses due to supply chain disruptions in the Eurozone amounted to EUR 112.7 billion. With the increasing complexity of global supply chains and tightly synchronized transport schedules, the vulnerability of European trade to disruptions will continue to increase unless transport networks become more resilient. However, these measures must take into account environmental and climate change considerations in order to achieve the EU Green Deal and the UN Sustainable Development Goals for the transport sector by 2030 and beyond. The European vision of the physical internet enabling seamless access to resources and assets in open, connected and shared networks will be actively pursued.

ReMuNet will contribute to this vision by equipping the transportation network with the core capability to prepare for, respond to and adapt to disruptive events. With this in mind, we use digital technologies to holistically improve the resilience of logistics and freight transportation networks – from more robust participatory planning processes to shorter response times and faster system recovery. From an environmental point of view, ReMuNet makes a further contribution to the implementation of the Physical Internet and thus aims at synchromodal transportation options with the lowest emissions using the asset-sharing concept of relay traffic.

ReMuNet increases the resilience of the transport network and boosts the efficiency of the corridors. Currently, the European freight and logistics network lacks sufficient standards, digitalization and sustainable, cost-efficient business models for the joint use of multimodal transport modes. ReMuNet breaks down the planning horizons of multimodal transports to a synchromodal operational level and enables multimodal relay transports. ReMuNet is based on a self-learning system design that is continuously optimized on the basis of the underlying target functions “resilience” and “lowest emissions” and thus leads to a significant increase in corridor efficiency. The interdisciplinary consortium and the involvement of a large stakeholder network ensure practicability, marketability and broad acceptance.