MultiRELOAD focusses on the specific role and challenges of inland ports as multimodal freight nodes in reaching Europe’s greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target of at least 55 % by 2030, thereby shifting a substantial part of the 75% of inland freight carried today by road in the EU to inland waterways and rail, and by increasing operational efficiency, safety and reliability of existing infrastructures through digitalization. Inland Ports are key for multimodal transport chains, both continental and maritime transport. Without efficient nodes in the hinterland multimodal transport is not possible. However, the constraints and barriers are much higher in inland ports (space, urbanisation, demand, investments) than in seaports. MultiRELOAD enhances the collaboration between different freight nodes in Europe to jointly test innovations and create favorable market conditions for multimodal freight transport solutions. MultiRELOAD will demonstrate solutions in three Innovation Areas with specific aims by 2025 – mirroring measures of the EU’s Smart Mobility Strategy: A) Smart multimodal logistics: facilitate a shift from road to rail & IWT of 5%; B) Digital & Automated Multimodal Nodes and Corridors: increase operational efficiency by 20 % raise of handling capacity; C) Innovative business models: leading to an average cost reduction of freight transport by 10%. MultiRELOAD involves highly ambitious logistics hubs, including the multimodal node duisport (DE), Duisburg's highly ambitious port and the world’s largest and most advanced trimodal inland hub terminal, and the trimodal nodes Ports of Vienna (AT) and Basel (CH). The project is backed up by additional funding & financing for better integration of the freight transport nodes into overall logistic chains of about 450 Mio. EUR. MultiRELOAD involves a total of 22 partners comprising of highly innovative technology, logistics and service providers, leading European research institutions and well-connected networks.

O-CEI overarching goal is to pilot the imperative of accelerating the uptake and upscaling of innovative Cloud-Edge-IoT solutions, strengthening Europe’s competitiveness and open strategic autonomy by orchestrating cross-domain data sharing, minimising energy footprint, stimulating multi-sided marketplaces, and promoting open standards for virtualisation and interoperability. For doing so, O-CEI will feed with such innovative technologies, and a comprehensive framework, to eight multidimensional real-world pilots framed in key strategic sectors: electricity grid, electromobility, software-defined vehicles, agrifood and agriculture, logistics and urban environments. It will swiftly create and implement innovative solutions across the cloud continuum; and effectively address the needs of existing and emerging individual and cross-sector business value chains. By designing blueprints and providing utilities beyond the SotA, O-CEI will help project stakeholders (and 32 Open Call awardees) to achieve challenging objectives. All pilots are formed by technical and stakeholder actors covering the necessary value chains, having an outstanding cross-domain unifying thread: energy flexibility.