Co-produced Route-mapping to Accelerate Freight Decarbonisation: A Transdisciplinary Learning and Decision Framework (CRAFTeD) is a new research project set to bring together stakeholders in a process to ‘co-produce’ a methodology and plan to decarbonise the freight system of South West England by 2050.
Through the co-production process the project will identify current attitudes, behaviours and practices in the freight sector in the South West and how those would all need to change in order to achieve complete decarbonisation.
CRAFTeD is a collaboration between the University of the West of England, Bristol (Prof. Graham Parkhurst, Dr Daniela Paddeu) and the University of Bristol (Dr Ges Rosenberg, Dr Neil Carhart), supported by the South West Infrastructure Partnership and several other public and private sector organisations including CILT, Arup, Mott McDonald, Bristol Port Company, Bristol City Council, the West of England Combined Authority and Highways England, and is funded under the ‘Decarbonising UK Freight Transport’ initiative.
The first stage of the project ‘building knowledge’ will involve a review of freight energy demand-side trends over a 30-year horizon considering the changing economic, demographic, and business model contexts as well as uncertainties related to factors such as Brexit, natural hazards and pandemics. A review of technologies for decarbonisation will have the objective of identifying a series of key development trajectories, trends, barriers, decision-making points, tipping points and key uncertainties to inform stakeholder co-analysis.
The project will then host a series of stakeholder workshop ‘co-creation events’ which will deploy, test, enhance and validate the decision and engagement framework for route-mapping, supported by group model building and the policy context reviews, these activities leading to an exemplar route-map specifically responding to the particular situation and needs of the South West, but located within the national and international policy context.
In the final stage of the work the replicability and transferability of the framework and route-map to other regions will be explored through a further stakeholder engagement workshop with freight stakeholders drawn from outside the South West.
The CRAFTeD team will shortly be seeking stakeholders to take part in the online workshops of the project in December and January.
For more information contact Project Lead Graham Parkhurst.