Analysis of effects of disruptive events on the European freight transport network and resulting societal impact

The Horizon Europe project Resilient Multimodal Transport Networks (ReMuNet) aims to improve the resilience of the freight transport network in the EU in the face of disruptive events and to enhance sustainability. This is proposed to be achieved by offering network users alternate routing options and identifying disruptions and ways to mitigate their impacts.
One of the four core objectives of the ReMuNet project is to develop a standardized methodology to describe multimodal transport networks. The proposed standard is derived from existing approaches and developed together with critical stakeholders to ensure Europe-wide practicability and acceptance which can be easily transferred into appropriate regulatory frameworks ensuring more efficient communication and operational stakeholder inter-connectivity. The first task towards this core objective was to create a typology of disruptive events, which has been addressed in a prior report for Task 1.3. The subsequent report addressed Task 1.4, which conducted root cause and impact analysis of selected disruptive events. This report presents T1.5: Analysis of effects of disruptive events on the European freight transport network and resulting societal impact. Building on typologies and classifications of disruptive events in Task 1.3, and the root-cause analysis in Task 1.4, Task 1.5 presented in this report will analyze the societal impact of transport network disruptions. This analysis will be utilized in Work Packages 2 and 4.
This report analyses the impact of disruptive events on the transport network, the underlying supply chain, and the society. The impact, the response and the resilience demonstrated at each of these three levels is analysed for six case studies of disruptive events in the European transport network. Conclusions are drawn regarding the societal impact of disruptions, the resilience to disruptions, and the intersectionality of disruptive events. The team at Hanken School of Economics conducted a qualitative study that included 17 interviews and 6 focus group discussions, as well as extensive document analysis. The disruptive events analysed in this report represent different categories according to causes as specified in the typology of disruptive events developed in Deliverable 1.3 and affected the TEN-T corridors Rhine-Danube and North Sea-Baltic. Analysis is based on the previously developed typology and informed by a review of the extant literature. At the end of this report, recommendations for how to manage the impact of disruptive events in the European transport network and to enhance its resilience are given for transport network operators, supply chain managers, and policy makers.
By building on the typology for disruptive events developed in ReMuNet Task 1.3 and the root causes identified in T1.4, this report provides insights to impacts of disruptive events on different levels, the transport network, supply chains and society. This study is an important part of achieving the goal of the project: the building of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based collaborative platform to promote synchro-modal relay transport across European rail, road, and inland waterways to improve network resilience, reduce emissions, and boost corridor efficiency during disruptive events. The analysis on societal impact, along with the terminology and typology developed in the previous task in this qualitative study will be a critical input to the mathematical models that follow in subsequent work packages.