However, few studies have examined the current application of ICT from the viewpoint of
multimodal transport as a whole, with the exceptions of Giannopoulos (2004) and Perego et al.
(2011). Both works did not specifically address ICT developments in facilitating multimodal
freight transport provisions and execution. Rather than conducting a purely academic
literature review of current academic publications which offers rather limited insights, we
have adopted a different approach where we have reviewed and scrutinised in depth EU
projects (as shown in Table 1) as we discuss in Section 3. Those diverse ranges of ICT
initiatives under EU framework programmes to support multimodal operations could be
categorised into the following main types following TAP (2000) classification: freight
resource management systems and applications, terminal and port information and
communication systems and applications, freight and fleet tracking and management systems
and applications and integrated operational/information exchange platform/portal/marketplace.
Table 1 presents a summary of selected EU FP projects that focus on the development of ICT
solutions within the multimodal setting. In the table we have also included a description of the
potential benefits of using these applications where selected projects are discussed in more
detail as supporting examples