The International Transport Forum has published a second methodological report that I have written for the OECD / ITF Strategic Infrastructure Programme for Asia (SIPA).  It complements the previous three reports in the series, on the connectivity, resilience and decarbonisation of freight transport systems,written by, respectively, Professor Ruth Banomyong of Thammasat University, Dr Jasper Verschuur of TU Delft and myself. This fourth report examines the inter-relationships between connectivity, decarbonisation and resilience in the development of freight transport systems.  Research, strategic planning and public policy-making on these three entities has tended to be siloed.  By making the inter-dependences between them more explicit, this new report should help policy-makers and planners to exploit potential synergies and manage trade-offs more effectively.  It can be downloaded here.

I identified a total of 35 interconnections between connectivity, decarbonisation and resilience and classified them into three categories: synergistic, conflicting and hybrid. The good news is that two-thirds of them appear to be in the first category, suggesting that efforts to enhance connectivity and resilience and to reduce emissions are, in most cases, mutually reinforcing. Only four of the inter-relationships (11%) are likely to involve a trade-off on every occasion, while eight (23%) could be either synergistic or conflicting, depending on particular circumstances. In the case of these hybrid relationships, appropriate policy measures should help to mitigate potentially adverse effects.

I was also interviewed on the content of the report by ITF analyst @Yaroslav.  The 30 min recording of the interview is available on ITF’s YouTube channel

While the regional context for the analyses is Asia, much of the content of the reports is generic and applicable to other parts of the world. Copies of all the reports, and results of related surveys in Central Asia and South East Asia, are available here.

You can also find links to links to videos of webinar presentations here.

The ZERO platform of DVZ posted a summary in German of my ITF ‘relationships’ paper in November 2024:

English translation of the summary