Smart and Sustainable Logistics Ecosystem of Panama: A Conceptual Model

Greta Thunberg highlighted in her speech during the COP 2019 the lack of integrity about the goals of the countries in emission reduction when vessel and aircraft transportation has a great impact over pollution and none of them were addressed, that is the case of multimodal logistics systems in the world wide world. The question is What are Latin-American multimodal Logistics systems doing about it? Latin America has a great model in Pollution reduction and optimization of operations because Panama is working for decades to reduce emissions in the Panama Logistic ecosystem. For example, Panama Canal expansion increased the efficiency of movements in global commerce while reducing the impact of emissions. During the decade of 2010s, the Panama Canal took the risk to expand the canal to a third set of Locks and a new type of vessel arrived, the Neo-Panamax, which increased the capacity per vessel from 8,000 TEUS to 15,000 TEUs. Panama is increasing the awareness about the logistics impact over the emissions, but there are still challenges because of the increment of 87.5% of the load movement into the Logistic hub of Panama, and there is a need to address real-time information about the performance of the Distribution Centers, the ports, and the interaction with the Logistic ecosystem to increase efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions. Thus, the main objective of this research is to summarize the journey of the Panama Logistic Innovation path that results in a conceptual model of Smart and Sustainable Logistic Ecosystem (SSLE).