A peer-to-peer platform for decentralized logistics

We introduce a novel platform for decentralized logistics, the aim of which is to magnify and accelerate the impact offered by the integration of the most recent advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to multi-modal freight operations. The essence of our peer-to-peer (P2P) framework distributes the management of the logistics operations to the multiple actors according to their available computational resources. As a result, this new approach prevents the dominant players from capturing the market, ensures equal opportunities for different size actors, and avoids vendor lock-in. The latest ICTs such as Industrial Data Space (IDS), Blockchain, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) are used as basic building blocks which, together, enable the creation of a trusted and integrated platform to manage logistics operations in a fully decentralized way. While IDS technology allows for secured data exchange between the different parties in the logistics chain, Blockchain technology handles transaction history and agreements between parties in a decentralized way. IoT enables the gathering of real-time data over the logistics network, which can be securely exchanged between the different parties and used for managing the decision-making related to the control of the freight transportation activities. The practicability and the potential of the proposed platform is demonstrated with two use cases, involving various actors in the logistics chains.