Projects

Vulnerability and resilience in the logistics network

Research into the vulnerabilities, the resilience and the bottlenecks of the logistics network. The work ran along three lines at once: data analysis of origin and destination pairs, desk research into the national and international literature, and interviews with experts from the sector. That gave the provincial authority practical next steps for policy.

Good data is hard to come by in this field, because much of it sits with individual companies. We looked closely at what pan-European sources are available. The finding was a sober one: the level of detail in those sources, and the access to them, still fall short of a sharp picture of freight corridors such as the North Sea–Baltic Corridor.

Where does the network get stuck, and what happens if one link falls away?

Origin and destination of freight flows, mapped

Research into the origins and destinations of freight flows at NUTS 1, 2 and 3 level, and into how usable that European regional classification really is for understanding transport flows. The result is a logistics dashboard that shows the flows between European regions.

The dashboard was presented, among other places, at the closing conference of InnoWaTr on 28 May 2026 in Harlingen, an Interreg North Sea project (2023–2026) in which 24 European partners worked on smarter and more sustainable freight transport by water. There is more about it in the InnoWaTr flipbook and in this post on LinkedIn. How the province shared the dashboard itself is in the news section.

From raw European regional data to a map you can hold a conversation with.

The impact of the vehicle fleet in an area

A multi-year project to work out what the vehicles registered in an area actually add up to. For that we developed an estimation model for the distance travelled and the CO₂ emissions of the fleet, and for the electricity demand that already goes with it, down to four-digit postcode level. Policymakers can then see which areas to concentrate on when encouraging and supporting a cleaner fleet.

The characteristics of a vehicle type determine its emissions and its energy use, or track closely with them.

Travel behaviour of the employees of a large organisation

Multi-year research into the travel behaviour of the employees of a large organisation, through online questionnaires. It produces the data needed for the statutory reporting duty on work-related passenger mobility (WPM in Dutch), and then goes further than the duty requires.

Staff were also shown possible policy directions, and we looked closely at why they do or do not travel sustainably. So the organisation knows not just how its people travel, but which measures stand a chance of working.

Not only the figures required by law, but the reasons behind them.

Safety culture around traffic incidents

Research into traffic incidents within a company. Through in-depth interviews we set out the safety culture around driving: what counts as normal among colleagues, what pressure people feel, how much working and calling goes on behind the wheel, and how often people drive while tired. In short, the reasons incidents come about.

That is a different kind of answer from an accident register. Not just what happened, but why it could happen, and therefore what the organisation itself needs to change.

An incident is rarely explained by the course of events alone.

BikeSafeAI

Development of an AI tool: both the working environment for traffic engineers and the algorithms behind it, which read camera images to assess cycling safety faster and more accurately. Dangerous situations are spotted sooner and tackled more precisely.

Carried out from Hanze University of Applied Sciences, within a consortium of research institutes, municipalities and companies specialising in traffic camera work.

Citylogistics 2.0

This project worked on an innovative, energy-neutral distribution system for the last mile in the city: a self-sufficient mobile mini hub with a Light Electric Freight Vehicle (LEFV) that runs on the renewable energy the hub itself supplies.

One focus was how these large vehicles interact with other traffic, analysed from camera footage. That matters most for vulnerable road users, because a fully electric vehicle of this kind still counts as a bicycle in law.

Carried out within the Interreg VI programme Deutschland–Nederland, by a broad consortium, from Hanze University of Applied Sciences.

How vulnerable road users behave around electric cargo bikes on the move.

MOBISITIE: the mobility transition

The project dealt with the shift to sustainable mobility in rural areas. Three use cases, for three municipalities, were central to it.

A prototype of a digital tool was designed to support council staff in their policy choices.

This was a joint project, run from Hanze University of Applied Sciences, in a consortium with municipalities and companies.

Policy choices in the shift to sustainable mobility in rural areas.

Research into paying parkers at an educational institution

Commissioned by an educational institution, we studied who the paying parkers are at two large car parks. The picture came from nearly 100 structured interviews and online questionnaires, spread across different days and times to keep it representative.

They turn out to be mostly students living within a 15 km radius. By their own account, poor public transport connections are an important reason for driving in. There is scope to encourage cycling among those living nearby, and to offer a decent alternative to those living further out.

Travel survey among the staff of an educational institution

Questionnaire research among all staff of a large educational institution into their work-related travel: home and work location, motives, and subjects such as car sharing, parking, cycling facilities and business travel.

One conclusion stood out: a sizeable share of the staff living within cycling distance still drive in. More sustainable travel, or more working from home, would cut CO₂ emissions substantially. Park and ride and public transport are barely seen as serious alternatives.

Green and Digital Maritime Innovation Ecosystem Northern Netherlands

In this project a consortium built a maritime innovation ecosystem in the north of the Netherlands: a large number of northern small and medium-sized enterprises, start-ups, large companies, maritime research institutes and representative organisations, all focused on green and digital shipping. Part of the work, carried out from Hanze University of Applied Sciences, looked at what it would take to set up a test facility for redox flow batteries under dynamic conditions, namely the pitch and roll of a ship.

SMILES Living Lab

Open, connected logistics networks built on shared mobility are where this is heading. In this living lab a broad consortium explored the opportunities and the barriers of such networks, from an economic, technical, legal, ethical, psychological and practical angle, and tested concepts together with the companies taking part.

The role of Hanze University of Applied Sciences was to develop a platform for friendly micro-logistics (crowd delivery).

VRAMBO: virtual reality for ambulance training

Ambulance nurses work under time pressure in unpredictable, complex emergencies that are hard to reduce to protocol and expensive to simulate. Working closely with the profession, and in short iterative rounds, this project developed a new training method built around a VR experience for practising exactly those situations.

Let them experience it! Experiencing traffic risk in VR

Research into how sensory and interactive elements in a virtual environment sharpen the experience of risk, applied to safe smartphone use behind the wheel. An experience like that can shift attitudes and later behaviour. The focus was on inexperienced drivers, who carry the higher risk.

VR design for driver training

Preparation for the theory and practical driving tests has barely changed in years, which leaves an opening for the creative sector. This project examined what a comfortable VR environment demands visually and interactively (no motion sickness), and how much design room there is for a varied, worthwhile set of exercises in support of driver training.

Safe and satisfied cycling in the digital age

Smartphone use while cycling is a growing problem, and at heart a problem of attention. Together with the regional road safety body for Friesland (ROF) and New Nexus Mobile, we looked at what mobile technology has to do to keep a rider's attention safely on the road: smarter controls, better filtering of messages, and making use of the phone's own sensors.

Student teams worked the concepts up into several prototypes, each of them evaluated.

Care2Wear: augmented reality in dementia care

The Care2Wear partnership works on helping older people, including those with dementia, live independently at home for longer by maintaining and improving their physical and mental wellbeing. The focus was on what future smart glasses could do: video and audio links to family carers, and virtual and augmented reality for navigation, for encouraging movement and for mental exercise.

CyclingGo Junior

This project encourages children to cycle and at the same time tells public bodies how safe the cycle routes to school are, in fact and as they feel. Unsafe routes are one of the biggest barriers to cycling to school. The findings feed back into the teaching programme and help authorities take preventive measures.

Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS)

Commissioned by Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch highways agency, and in collaboration with Goudappel Coffeng, we studied how cooperative transport services (warnings about roadworks or stationary vehicles, for example) can be improved from the perspective of human behaviour.

We examined how factors such as the state of the driver, the weather and the traffic conditions shape the content, the timing and the form of the information, working towards a standard that would hold nationally and command broad support.

Truck Merging Support: a step towards autonomous driving

Within the STW project Truck Merging Support: a Step towards Autonomous Driving, the human factors role was to study how lorries can join the motorway more safely. Driving experiments in truck simulators were designed, run and analysed, all focused on merging with the rest of the traffic.

It also involved supervising master's students who graduated on parts of the project.

Merging in a lorry: where the driver and the automation have to complement each other.

Pay as You Drive: rewards, penalties and behavioural feedback

A two-year study into rewards, penalties and behavioural feedback in pay-as-you-drive systems: services that measure how someone drives and attach consequences to it. We examined how far those incentives really change driver behaviour. Carried out with an insurer and Rijkswaterstaat.

The same period brought research into variable message signs that steer the choice of speed on the slip road, combining focus groups with a driving simulator. And after an extensive literature study, factsheets were drawn up on variable signs, traffic signs and in-vehicle support systems.

What really changes driving behaviour: a reward, a penalty, or simply knowing how you drive?

REFLECT: mental workload in the vehicle

A European research project (EU FP7) into pervasive adaptive systems: systems that sense the state of their user (emotion, cognitive load, physical condition) and adapt to it. The car was the testing ground. The consortium was led by Fraunhofer FIRST, with partners including Ferrari, Philips, LMU Munich, LJMU Liverpool, the University of Groningen, the University of Pavia and the Mihajlo Pupin Institute. There is more on the REFLECT project site.

The doctoral research within this project focused on measuring mental workload for the individual driver in real time, and on linking that to a support system that adapts to them.

A vehicle that notices when it is becoming too much for the driver.