By Guido Ottolenghi, Coordinator of the Logistics, Transport and Economy Technical Group of the sea CONFINDUSTRIA
Integrated intermodal logistics must increasingly represent the ordinary choice, and not only a mere option, for every company. Europe demands it, just like the strong willingness of our country towards export and the dynamics of International trade. An efficient intermodality represents a valuable instrument for Italy to play a primary role in the renewed strategic centrality of the Mediterranean sea in the routes of International freight transport. The advantages of the adoption of rail-road-sea transport solutions are numerous. First of all, the reduction of transport costs – in order to stand out in a very competitive marketthrough the determination of economies of scales, as well as external transport costs (pollution, accidents), through modal rebalancing. Intermodal transport can also respond to increased needs of greater sustainability and lower environmental impact. To make this new trend effective, it is mandatory to adopt connected and fully interoperable technological platform, to allow a continuous, interactive connection between operators and public administrations. Smart Roads, automated driving and smart cities are unequivocally marking out the path of the future. This is a point of no return, one of the most significant challenges for future logistics (according to the last survey of Logistics Performance Index, set up by the World Bank, Italy was ranked in 21° place and 11 EU countries are further ahead). This is the era of Industry 4.0 and IoT and it is impossible to ignore.