Traffic orchestration aims to achieve the best possible utilisation of total capacity across modes, agile and robust handling of all situations – from everyday exceptions to disasters, and coordination with transport services for passenger and freight transport. The transport services will be supported so that they can be better adapted to current and future traffic situations. It is emphasized that the transport operations are parts of multimodal transport chains, where, for example, trucks may need to reach the ship that will carry the goods on the next leg. The ambition is to design a multimodal and digital ecosystem for multimodal traffic management and to develop and demonstrate solutions, flexible organizational models, and methods, tools and mechanisms that enable such an ecosystem and support strategies and policies related to transport.
One of the main results from the project is a reference architecture for multimodal traffic management. The architecture defines the digital ecosystem for multimodal traffic management where actors with different roles and systems are involved. The architecture describes solutions that extend today's traffic management. This includes extensive data collection and sharing that enables advanced decision support and a more resilient transport system where unwanted traffic situations are detected at an early stage, preferably before they occur, and undesirable situations can be averted or mitigated.
The principles of multimodal traffic management are tested in two living labs. One looks at traffic management for more reliable passenger transport to and from the Malpensa Airport in Milan in northern Italy, and the other at traffic management for better control with and more flexible freight transport to, from and within Herøya Industrial Park in Norway. The Herøya living lab also explores the integration of connected and automated vehicles into the traffic orchestration.
ORCHESTRA is coordinated by ITS Norway and brings together sixteen partners from six countries. More information is available here.
The role of SINTEF
SINTEF is the technical leader of the project and is responsible for the work on the reference architecture for multimodal traffic management. SINTEF also participates in activities within evaluation and in the training of those who will perform the manual tasks in traffic management.
The project is funded from the EU's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 953618.