About

Urban deliveries, and particularly the last‑mile segment of freight distribution, are becoming one of the most critical challenges faced by contemporary cities. The rapid growth of e‑commerce, increasing consumer demand for fast and flexible deliveries, and rising levels of urbanization have significantly intensified freight activity within urban areas. Last‑mile deliveries are widely recognized as the most complex, costly, and environmentally impactful stage of the logistics chain, contributing disproportionately to urban congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, noise, and competition for limited public space.

In response to these challenges, cities are increasingly experimenting with sustainable and innovative urban delivery solutions, such as cargo bikes, urban consolidation schemes, autonomous vehicles, and the use of public transport systems for freight. However, the successful implementation of such measures depends not only on their technical and operational performance, but also on context‑specific conditions and stakeholder engagement. Participatory planning approaches, combined with structured evaluation tools, are therefore essential to support transparent, inclusive, and evidence‑based decision‑making in urban logistics.

This Summer School offers an intensive, practice‑oriented workshop focusing on urban deliveries at the local scale. Participants will be introduced to key concepts of urban logistics and participatory planning and apply them in a real‑life urban context. A central component of the Summer School is the use of the Evalog platform, an interactive decision‑support tool for the sustainability evaluation of urban logistics measures. Based on lectures, case studies, participatory activities, and hands‑on exercises, participants will explore how alternative urban delivery solutions can be assessed, compared, and selected, through stakeholder‑driven processes and familiarize on lessons learnt, and policy implications.

Prior to the Summer School, instructors will provide participants with background material to establishe a common knowledge base on the solutions to be examined and prepare a pre-school assignment.

During the Summer School, participants will implement participatory activities and role playing, assessment and decision-making to compare and select the preferred solutions.

The Summer School is addressed to graduate students, researchers, and professionals, who will expand their knowledge and practical skills in sustainable urban logistics, participatory planning, and policy‑oriented evaluation.

Content

Unit I: Urban Logistics and Sustainable Urban Delivery Solutions

Module 1: City Logistics Challenges and Urban Delivery Solutions

Description: The module addresses key challenges associated with deliveries in cities, including congestion, emissions, land‑use conflicts, and economic efficiency, as well as the role of logistics solutions within sustainable urban mobility planning.

Module 2: Assessing Sustainable Urban Delivery Solutions

Description: The module presents operational concepts, enabling conditions and limitations, forming the basis for assessment and comparative evaluation. Implementation of the EVALOG methodology.

Unit II: Participatory Planning for Urban Delivery Solutions

Module 1: Principles and Methods of Participatory Planning

Description: This module introduces participatory planning concepts and methodologies, including stakeholder identification, engagement strategies, and collaborative decision-making processes.

Module 2: Participatory Evaluation and Decision-Making

Description: This module focuses on the application of participatory planning to the evaluation of urban delivery solutions. Participants engage in focus groups representing different stakeholder perspectives to define evaluation criteria and assign weights. The outcomes of participatory processes are then translated into structured decision-making and evaluation activities.

Assignment for certificate

To obtain the certificate of successful completion, participants are required to:

• Successfully complete and submit the pre-workshop assignment
• Actively participate in lectures, discussions, and participatory activities
• Contribute to focus groups and the evaluation process
• Complete a final reflection on results and policy implications

Tutors

Eftihia Nathanail

Eftihia Nathanail is TTLog’s Director and Professor in Transportation Systems Design and Evaluation, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Thessaly. She acts as  Dangerous Goods Expert to the Transport Group Inland Surface Transport, NATO, and as Committee Member of Hazardous Material Transportation (AT040) of TRB since 2009. She is the national representative of the European Initiatives COST-TU1004 (Modelling Public Transport Passenger Flows in the Era of Intelligent Transport Systems), and COST-TU1305 (Social networks and travel behavior”, European Cooperation in Science and Technology). She was member in the board of experts in ECOMOBILITY, ECOCITY, RESTRAIL and MIND-SETS. She served as national representative in the Support Framework Business program 2000-2006 and Foresight Technology, Greece and the European Thematic Network ROSEBUD. Her fields of research are transportation planning, transportation system design, intelligent transportation systems, behavioral modeling, intermodal transportation, logistics, multicriteria evaluation and optimization. She has participated in various European and National projects as scientific project manager. In her recent research, she assessed the impact of smart solutions on transportation, studied systems interconnecting long and short distance transportation for passengers and freight (CLOSER), analysed the effect of collaborative schemes and information distributed systems on urban and interurban networks (STRAIGHTSOL*, NOVELOG*), evaluated efficiency of urban public transportation interchanges on travelers and society (CITY-HUB*), coordinated the development and implementation of an educational curriculum for sustainable transport interchanges (ALLIANCE*). She has done extensive research on behavior modeling and road safety and she has led one National and five local traffic safety campaigns (CAST*).

*: European funded research projects

Nikolaos Gavanas

Nikolaos Gavanas is an Assistant Professor of Transportation at the Department of Urban Planning and Regional Development. He holds a PhD in Transportation Engineering from the Department of Civil Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), where he also obtained a Diploma in Civil Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Transportation Design. He has served as a contract academic lecturer at the Department of Spatial Planning and Development Engineering and the Department of Civil Engineering at AUTH, as well as at the former Department of Civil Engineering of the Technical University of Thessaly. He has also worked as a Policy Officer at the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission and has extensive experience as a researcher in national and European-funded research projects, as well as in traffic and transportation studies. He has contributed to national research and innovation policy as a member of the Sectoral Scientific Council (TES) for Environment, Energy and Sustainable Mobility of the National Council for Research, Technology and Innovation (ESETEK) (Government Gazette 932/09-11-2020-YODD). His research interests include transport planning, traffic engineering, sustainable mobility, and the interrelationship between transport systems and spatial development.