The European Union (EU) has shared the findings of its EU-funded study into how the Internet of Things can and will support collaborative logistics.

ICONET, a 30-month research project funded by the EU, has just delivered final outputs, and the EU is keen that these results are shared with organisations involved in the transport and logistics sector.

ICONET has provided proof of concept testing of Internet of Things capability and how it can be applied to support collaboration between multiple logistics service providers and users; the Physical Internet, frequently abbreviated to PI, supports optimisation of transport and logistics through connecting fixed facilities, (such as warehouses), and dynamic infrastructure, (such as trucks), to the digital world, so that transport of goods can be ‘self-organised’ as transport flows.

These managed flows are able to respond to real time changes in user demand, service capacity and problems in the network: accidents etc. The consortium tested the concepts and technologies in four ‘Living Labs’, and the attached report focuses on Living Lab 4, which tested how the Physical Internet can support shared Warehousing as a Service (WaaS).