Development of a logistics brokering system for South Africa's displaced rural residents

Abstract

A key challenge in rural environments is to overcome constraints such as high transport cost, irregular or unpredictable transport services, transport of low passenger and freight volumes, low logistics service demand and supply, limited local skills vailability and isolation from or limitations to accessing the information society or knowledge networks. The use of ICT and relevant service systems holds the potential to overcome such constraints, and could improve the general accessibility of rural households and enterprises (e.g. to services, peers and markets). During 2008/9 the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research's (CSIR) Built Environment unit initiated a research project to develop and test a logistics brokering system that could overcome rural transport challenges facing local residents. The system, using a session oriented service known as Unstructured Supplementary Services Data (USSD), provided a mechanism to capture demand for transport which could then be organised and be matched with the supply of transport (the local transport providers). The project utilised a living labs approach to overcome sustainability challenges normally associated with systems in rural areas. A service system framework was applied to develop the system: It distinguishes that different aspects need attention in the design of a new (service) system which includes a service concept, an organizational network and a technical architecture. The paper expands on both the living lab approach; the service system framework used to develop the logistics brokering demonstrator, and lists factors that affected the outcome of the system development