SARIL - Sustainability And Resilience for Infrastructure and Logistics networks

We invite you to join two European research projects that focus on the advancement of green logistics practices and the development of effective responses to disruptions. Engaging and closely collaborating with various logistics stakeholders throughout the project's duration is essential for us in order to obtain practice-oriented research results. But we also need input  from other stakeholders that rely on or provide transport. In this letter, we will provide you with detailed information about the project objectives and clarify the significance of your involvement.

Purpose 

The SARIL project is part of the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101103978, included in the call "HORIZON-CL5-2022-D6-02-07 - New concepts and approaches for resilient and green freight transport and logistics networks against disruptive events (including pandemics)". The project is a collaboration between several European countries with partners from research, business, associations, and authorities working with logistics. The project will develop holistic methodologies and tools for enabling infrastructure managers to assess the resilience of logistics networks and improve them to ensure appropriate ‘green resilience’ when expanding the infrastructure. It will also pprovide logistics stakeholders with information about disruptions to assist in making the right decisions about moving cargo, evaluating, and developing new mitigation measures and employing simulations to predict their effectiveness. RIL's sister project ReMuNet, funded by the European UnAbout ion under Grant Agreement No. 101104072, aims to enable transport logistics companies to respond more quickly, efficiently, and sustainably to disruptive events in the Eurozone. ReMuNet strives to promote event-driven intermodal transportation across European rail, road, and inland waterways, bolstering supply chain resilience in the face of disruptions. The project's objective is to develop a digital solution that can promptly detect and alert to disruptive events, evaluate their effects on various transport routes through data sharing among logistics stakeholders, and enhance route planning resilience by suggesting predefined, multimodal alternatives. This approach ensures the uninterrupted flow of goods in crisis areas by efficiently utilizing suitable transport modes like trucks, trains, or barges as needed. To increase the sustainability of transportation, the digital solution can evaluate the alternative transport routes not only in terms of cost efficiency, but also in terms of emissions. While ReMuNet's primary purpose is to steer clear of crisis areas, it also serves a humanitarian role by assisting aid organizations in navigating disrupted transport routes. It provides information on both the currently affected routes and potential provisional alternatives for targeted transport to crisis areas.

To support the goals of both projects, this survey seeks to analyse European logistics stakeholders' and those dependent on logistics and transport, and their experiences with disruptions, their responses, communication hurdles, and future expectations related to disruptions.

Who is responsible for the research project? 

Fraunhofer EMI in Germany is the project coordinator for SARIL, while FIR at RWTH Aachen University in Germany is the coordinator for ReMuNet. Research partner SINTEF AS in SARIL will be doing the collection, storage and processing of data and will therefore be in charge of treatment responsibilities. 

Why are you asked to participate? 

You are asked to participate because you work as an infrastructure manager in transport or as a logistics stakeholder, a local regional or national authority, or as an association connected to these topics. Or you are in a business, e.g., goods owner or goods production, that is potentially highly affected by disruptions in logistics networks. The information to be able to contact you is obtained from project partners or advisory board members of SARIL and ReMuNet or from public websites. 

What does it mean for you to participate? 

Participation in the survey means using approximately 20 minutes to answer an online questionnaire. The survey will be sent in two rounds. In the second round you will get access to the other actors' average scores on certain questions and can also adjust your own answer on some questions. The second round will take from 10-15 minutes to answer. While answering the surveys is completely voluntary, we do hope you can participate in both, so we are able to collect a wider variation in answers (first round), and then see which of these answers are more prominent (round 2).

It is voluntary to participate 

It is voluntary to participate in the survey(s). If you choose to participate, you can withdraw your consent as long as you can be identified in the gathered data (e.g., as long as personal information is being treated). All your personal information and collected data will then be deleted. It will not have any negative consequences for you if you do not want to participate or later choose to withdraw. 

Your privacy - how we store and use your information 

We will only use the information about you for the purposes we have described in this letter. We treat the information confidentially and in accordance with the privacy regulations. The survey is based on consent, which means that by ticking the box or starting the survey you are consenting to us treating your private information. Retrieving the contact information is based on the Public Access to Information Act § 3, in Norway. All data is stored at SINTEF according to their internal procedures. This means on our servers on with our software, where we follow routines for storing data. The data is protected with multifactor authentication and is only available to those users who are actively working on the project. Individuals will not be recognizable in end results or publications. Anonymised data will be shared with the ReMuNet project.

What happens to your information when we end the research project? 

The information will be anonymised as soon as possible after the survey. And no later than the end of the project on 31.05.2026, all personal information will be anonymised or deleted. 

Your rights 

As long as you can be identified in the data material, you have the right to: 

• access to which personal information is registered about you, and to receive a copy of the information
• to have personal information about you corrected
• to have personal information about you deleted 
• to send a complaint to the Data Inspectorate about the processing of your personal data

The one interviewing you can be contacted regarding this.

What entitles us to process personal information about you? 

SINTEF bases for processing personal data are: Consent for the information obtained through ticking the box in the survey or starting the survey. On behalf of SINTEF, SIKT (previously NSD - Norwegian Center for Research Data AS) has assessed that the processing of personal data in this project is in accordance with the privacy regulations.

Where can I find out more? 

You can find more information about the projects either by visiting the webpages, ReMuNet or SARIL  or by contacting SARIL coordinator Corinna Köpke at Fraunhofer EMI, or ReMuNet coordinator John von Stamm at FIR at RWTH Aachen University, . Please contact Research Scientist Lillian Hansen, for any questions regarding getting access to the data and/or having your data delete at

If you have questions about the assessment of the study, please contact SIKT (NSD - Norwegian Center for Research Data AS), by email () or telephone: +47 73984040 

If you want to exercise your rights or complain, please contact privacy coordinator Jan Wåge by email () or telephone: +47 405 56 650, alternatively

With best regards 

Lillian Hansen, Research Scientist, SINTEF  

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Declaration of consent 

• I have received and understood information about the SARIL and ReMuNet projects and have had the opportunity to ask questions.
• I agree that my information will be processed until the project is completed. 

By starting the survey, or ticking the box of consent, you agree to the conditions and to participate in the survey.