New business models are needed to make rural regions attractive and livable again. Digitization offers great opportunities. The logistics of goods plays a central role here. However: conventional logistics infrastructures are unsuitable for the low flows of goods in rural areas from an economic and ecological point of view. The network "Autonomous Logistics in Rural Areas" aims to develop novel logistics systems and concrete technical solutions with the help of autonomous means of transport in order to organize deliveries and flows of goods in rural areas in a demand-oriented, cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner. The primary use case is the village store, expanded as a local logistics node in postal and parcel delivery over the last mile. Further use cases in the area of local flows of goods, materials and energy are to be developed in the network

Due to increasing environmental awareness, many governments and municipalities are formulating goals to increase sustainability of urban logistics. The project ZUKUNFT.DE, funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI), aims to render last-mile deliveries in the largest German cities emission-free. For this purpose, conventional internal combustion engine vehicles shall be replaced by battery-electric vehicles in the selected regions. In view of the fact that traffic restrictions in metropolitan areas and legal restrictions regarding pollutant emissions are perspectively increasing, it shall be tested whether daily operations can be conducted unimpeded and economically with the new electric propulsion technology.

The ChainLog project, funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWI)) aims to identify current examples, good practices, and guidelines for decision-making regarding the Blockchain technology for SMEs. In the light of the many possibilities for applying Blockchain and the numerous implementation alternatives, ChainLog is to provide a web-based tool for these companies. It will allow them to identify existing potentials and to prepare strategic decisions regarding the application of blockchain in a well-founded manner.

Funding phase two builds upon the findings of the first funding phase, which investigated targeted marketing communication with social networks in the early phases after product launch of hedonic media products such as books, computer games or music. This project looks at the time before product launch to investigate methods of quantitative support for the ideation and product development phases. Existing text mining approaches are to be refined and extended, enabling automated Needmining, i.e. a quantitative, objective representation of potential customer needs. This datafication of the ideation- and product development phase is to be established, so that quantitatively collected, qualitatively edited wishes, filtered out of the communication of the potential customers can be used as decision support instead of biased instinct and creativity.

The greater scope of NutriSafe (funded by the German Federal Ministry for Research and Education) is to ensure the security of food production and logistics via "Distributed Ledger Technology" (DLT). This sub project uses exemplarily work out of the Hamburg Region. It aims to analyze the resiliency of the food supply chain and explore the potential of increasing transprency in regional food supply with the implementation of DLT into practice. This is further examined through knowledge transfer via consumer experiments.

Hedonic media products (HMP) are increasingly marketed via platforms such as Netflix (movies), Spotify (music), and Skoobe (books) that offer large assortments for streaming as flat fee subscriptions. Among other subjects in funding phase two, this project will analyze whether music labels or artists should rather sell their physical CDs or downloads of songs exclusively for a while or whether they should offer their songs on Spotify either at the same time, delayed or never. The question extends to whether the offering via these platforms is profitable at all.

It can be expected that road freight transport in the European Union will increase by around 50% until 2050. This growth in road traffic will increasingly lead to traffic congestion and travel times along some routes will increasingly depend on the traffic situation. This research project, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) aims to develop models and methods allowing transport service providers to tackle the economical, ecological, and societal challenges that arise due to this increase, with a particular focus on planning routes and schedules for regenerable resources, such as battery-powered vehicles. 

How can the Internet of Things (IoT) secure sufficient, safe and healthy food and strengthen competitiveness of farming and food chains in Europe? It is expected that the project, funded by the European Community, will pave the way for data-driven farming, autonomous operations, virtual food chains and personalized nutrition for European citizens.

Traditionally, transport and logistics companies have exchanged documents, waybills and customs documents in paper form or, more recently, through various digital means such as email. However, the lack of an integrated software solution, due to the large number of companies involved, causes errors and does not protect records against tampering. The HANSEBLOC project, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Research and Education (BMBF) aims to develop prototypes of such an integrated system using blockchain technology.

The SENSE project objective is to accelerate the path towards the Physical Internet (PI), so that advanced pilot implementations of the PI concept are well functioning and extended in industry practice by 2030, and hence contribute to at least 30 % reduction in congestion, emissions and energy consumption. The project is funded by the European Community.