REFER - Reducing Road Freight Empty Running

The company is involved in the Intelligent Transport Systems, Solutions and Logistics using Artificial Intelligence techniques. C4FF is in a consortium that was awarded a major and prestigious UK Government Funded called REFER. The REFER project will develop an innovative system for significantly reducing the levels of empty and part-filled running, ie backloading, of freight road vehicles. This will lead to reduced freight operating costs, fuel usage and carbon emissions. It will achieve these aims by developing processes that overcome existing issues with ‘embedded behaviours’ and enable improved matching of the ‘available empty and part-filled load journeys’ of freight enterprises with customer’s demands for goods to be moved.

This project will build on the consortium's existing expertise with knowledge management and Artificial Intelligence (AI) planning and result in significant beneficial effects on transport networks through optimation techniques leading to a reduction in the freight vehicles mileage and carbon emissions emitted by freight vehicles during this travel.

REFER will support the competitiveness of the UK logistics industry by producing a marketable solution providing realised systems capable of integration with existing distribution planning software that operators see value in and will want to use and buy.

Check out http://dmu-campam.co.uk/refer/about.php for more details