Impact Analysis of Innovative Means of Cargo Transport

Transport logistics is subject to constant change, having to react to transforming business requirements and environmental challenges. Innovative means of transport, for example drones, zeppelins and the concept Hyperloop promise new solutions for cargo transport. Apart from clarifying technical, economical and legal issues for real-life implementation the resulting economic, social and environmental impacts deserve high attention. For that reason, this work deals with a structured estimation of regional impacts from transport connections, which utilize innovative means of transport. The impact analysis considers various effects and is based on expert appraisal and statistical data. The developed approach is applied to international regions with particular relevance to Austria. Results can be utilized for the preselection of scenarios for transport network extension and provide a quantification of regional impacts as input for quantitative transport network modelling.