As organizers of the 1st ECITL conference in Lucerne, in November 2008, we were happy and even a bit surprised by the outcome of last year’s event regarding the response and acceptance received from industry users in the logistics sector and the high awareness of the importance of ICT to them. We knew ICT for Transport Logistics is a key subject for researchers and engineers, but we were also aware of taking a risk in trying to bring them and real users from the logistics industry together in the same event. The professional participation and the stimulating debates we had in Lucerne, involving the audience and the speakers, proved that the risk was worth taking. Alongside the community of ICT researchers and EU projects consortium members there is a high-valuable community of stakeholders in logistics who have requirements and ideas to help us pursuing real and valuable innovations in this field.

Scope

The conference will take a look into different subjects mostly dealing with the lack of available information in transport logistics and will explain how ICT can support operations and overcome information gaps between stakeholders. Topics of the conference include currently met and future challenges that need to be addressed, and cover business and technical issues in parallel tracks, e.g. strategic supply chain and tactical logistics operation enhancement through interoperable ICT implementations and possible impacts on business models, software and hardware technologies for implementation of interoperable information systems and available standards as well as security.

The event is organized in interactive sessions for possible participation of and discussions with the audience to also gather feedback and sharpen the view on changing challenges and requirements. Speakers in the sessions are experts on the topics and will come from the addressed audience, e.g. logistics operators and service providers, industry, researchers, authorities and infrastructure providers, and the supporting projects.

The conference homepage can be found at ECITL 2009