The RECOIL team won the Best Paper Award at the 51st International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering (CIE51) in Sydney, Australia, December 10, 2024, for the paper entitled “Emerging AI and Cognitive Digital Twin Technologies Towards Low-Carbon Multimodal Freight Transportation System.”
Effective monitoring of multimodal freight transportation dynamics is crucial for advancing global sustainable and low-carbon economies. Traditional approaches, relying on discrete simulations for each transportation mode using single-modal data, fall short in providing the comprehensive coverage needed for optimizing the multimodal freight system. This encompasses factors such as shipping time, costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and socio-economic impacts. The evolution of Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and advanced computing has given rise to cognitive digital twins, facilitating smart city applications through real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and system-wide optimization across interconnected transportation modes. This review discusses the integration of emerging geodata sources (including IoT, crowdsourcing, and connected vehicles), advanced ontology-driven simulation frameworks, and AI-driven optimization algorithms to enhance the sustainability, efficiency, and decarbonization of the multimodal transportation system at various scales. We evaluate these technologies and their application in tracking U.S. freight transport, highlighting the challenges of modeling and optimizing multimodal transportation. Drawing from our research, we propose conceptual and technical frameworks for developing a cognitive digital twin that merges these technologies into a cohesive and automated pipeline. Our discussion extends to potential solutions and research directions for achieving real-time situational awareness and optimizing the complex dynamics of multimodal transportation systems, aiming to contribute to the field’s advancement towards more integrated, sustainable, and scalable freight transportation solutions.