15/05/2025
Event recap: Insights from Ghent!
On 25th April, the Ghent Living Lab held its final event to present its use case to the local community. Attendees included representatives from the logistics and tech sectors, as well as local and Flemish authorities. The audience connected with the Living Lab concept and the challenges and solutions it explored throughout the project.
The event featured two interactive panel discussions, incorporating valuable input from the audience. These discussions highlighted two key insights gained from our Living Lab experience.
- One of its main findings is that the Urban Access Controller (UAC), developed by Be-Mobile, is effective. Through route optimisation in Traffic Management Systems (TMS) – tested by Dropon – logistics providers were able to reduce the total distance travelled. On average, each analysed route revealed 11 potential risks, for which the UAC offered alternatives. These risks often relate to high-stress environments for drivers, such as school zones or narrow delivery windows, and illustrate the complexity of route planning in a dense urban environment like Ghent. During the event, there was particular interest in the value of the UAC during testing. The greatest benefit lies with TMS providers, who frequently receive customer requests for up-to-date information on Urban Access Rules. Access to real-time, local traffic data enables providers to adapt plans during both the preparation and delivery phases. The real strength of the UAC is its potential integration into broader traffic management systems.
- For the UAC to function effectively, cities must provide machine-readable data. The City of Ghent already had an Open Data Portal, but further datasets were collected – for example, school entry points. While Ghent has a strong tradition of data sharing, many other Flemish local authorities face challenges in this area. To address this, we developed a Proof of Value for a dataspace that aimed to connect the cities of Mechelen, Leuven, and Hasselt. None of these cities had machine-readable Urban Access Rules or mobility data available. As a result, the Living Lab partners had to transform this information into usable datasets. Our final event confirmed that this is a significant issue. Flemish local authorities urgently need expertise and investment to improve their data maturity. Standardising and presenting Urban Access Rules at a Flemish level would make it much easier to implement technological solutions. The dataspace technology demonstrated by imec shows great promise in upscaling and accelerating this process. In fact, the dataspace presentation received the most positive feedback from attendees – something also reflected in the questions asked. Even local businesses saw opportunities to integrate this technology into their own planning systems and partnerships.
Throughout the project, Ghent consistently heard the same message from other local authorities: they lack the time, budget, and expertise to create open, standardised datasets. This directly impacts technology companies. For example, one TMS provider had to hire an additional employee just to manually digitise mobility rules across Flanders to ensure their system functioned properly.
In practice, this means that when a local authority decides to introduce, say, a weight restriction on a street for safety reasons, they may put up a road sign but fail to digitise the rule. Tech developers working in urban logistics are then forced to track and adapt to every local policy change manually.
Ghent’s event and tests clearly showed strong support for collecting and standardising UARs at the Flemish level. Dataspace technology is the key to making this happen efficiently and at scale.
Finally, this Living Lab demonstrated that efficiency and sustainability in logistics can go hand in hand. Though these goals are often seen as conflicting, we found that by optimising planning and aligning it with local traffic conditions, routes became shorter – leading to lower emissions. Addressing urban logistics challenges in a way that creates win-win outcomes for both cities and logistics providers can generate real positive impact.
Check the video for Ghent’s Living Lab here: DISCO Ghent Living Lab