A Centre of Excellence for freight in urban transport

The Sustainable Urban Freight Systems (SUFS) is a collaboration of the world´s six leading urban freight research groups forming the Core Research Partners to collectively transform urban freight systems and partner with a City Advisory Board, an Industry Advisory Group and Associate Research Centers.

Transforming the Urban Freight Systems (UFS) requires a global effort of research, capacity building, and institutional change, best done in collaboration with other agents of change.
The goal is to jumpstart an integrative and participatory process — involving cities, private sector, and researchers — that leads to the implementation of sustainable UFS paradigms that increase quality of life, economic efficiency, and address environ-mental justice. Such a holistic goal ensures that all key impacts are considered, as focusing on only one aspect could make things worse in the others.

The fundamental quest of SUFS is to change the course of the UFS from one driven by profit maximization to one that accounts for the externalities produced. The work will proceed along four thrusts:

• Needs assessment to identify education and research needs  of cities
• Research to address short and long-term research needs of cities in the areas of freight behavior, advanced modeling of UFS operations, innovative strategic modeling of UFS, and UFS policy
• Implementation to establish mecchanisms for stakeholder engagement and undertake joint public-private sector actions, to bring to reality the transformation of UFS stated in the CoE goal
• Education to build (local) professional and research capacity to help cities address UFS issues.

Host organisation:
The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)