SURFLOGH shines at 54th Annual UTSG Conference
Policy & pilots
Dr Cowie is a lecturer in Transport Economics and programme leader of the MSc in Transport Planning and Engineering at Napier and has considerable experience of research methods.
His presentation gave an overview of the SURFLOGH methodology - ‘research in action’ - and then outlined the aim of the studies, namely to establish the potential relationship between the prevailing policy framework and the success of pilots in each of the five SURFLOGH partner cities/provinces.
Dr Jonathan Cowie presents SURFLOGH's Research in Action
Assessing success
"The policy framework was assessed by applying Kiba Janaik’s (2017) idea of urban freight transport (UFT) policy maturity, " Jonathan explained. "This enables any city’s policy framework to be mapped onto one of five levels of hierarchical UFT policy maturity, ranging from low to high. On the other hand, the ‘success’ of pilots was established through a Delphi panel workshop held during the last SURFLOGH meeting in Groningen, immediately followed by face-to-face interviews with each of the project partners."
Insightful comparisons
The presentation was very well received, with subsequent discussions surrounding the extent to which the longevity of the pilot projects had an impact on their success. There were also some interesting insights and comparisons drawn with the Novelog project, an earlier EU Horizon 2020 project in which SURFLOGH partner the City of Mechelen had been a major participant.
Coming soon
While next year’s UTSG conference is planned to be held at Cardiff University in Wales, the full results of the SURFLOGH research are coming soon and will shortly be published on this website.
So watch out for “Business Models in Action: Policy Frameworks and Interventions’.