E-business and transportation: quantifying impacts: overall system & railway industry levels

E-business is defined here as encompassing both e-commerce and the application of information technology to link internal and external business operations - Business to Business (B2B). The findings reported here are the results of a recent Australia-wide study undertaken for a Federal Government Transport Agency. The study was intended to assist Australian business and government to pro-actively address the transport issues arising from e-business. The main aims were to undertake an analysis of the main transport impacts of e-business and to quantify those impacts on the different stakeholders at the national and regional levels. The Seminar will highlight the study methodology used to derive changes in demand from e-business take-up. The main study findings, in terms of likely changes in freight and passenger demand will be presented. The second part of the Seminar will deal with the results to date of a current project aimed at investigating the adoption of e-business in railways. The main aims of the project are to: Map information flows and supply chain participant requirements relevant to e-business adoption; Identify relevant successful e-business systems and practices for rail both in Australia and internationally; Identify impediments to adoption, for example lack of data interoperability and put forward options for overcoming these; and Develop a methodology to capture e-business costs and benefits so that such information technology systems can be evaluated using a common framework