by Distinguished Professor Jason Potts, Associate Professor Chris Berg, Professor Annette Markham, Professor Matt Warren, Professor Tania Lewis, Dr Max Parasol, Dr Alexia Maddox, Dr Darcy Allen, Dr Ahmad Salehi Shahraki and Mr Tulley Kearney, Report Contributors, RMIT University
In the third report in its Digital CBD Research series, RMIT explores how to utilise innovative emerging technologies to address the supply chain challenges and cybersecurity risks within Melbourne’s CBD.
R MIT’s third report in its research series, Towards just and resilient supply chains for the digital CBD, provides a strategic analysis on developing resilient and just supply chains for a digital CBD.
The report aims to provide a deeper understanding of the issues and challenges supply chains faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and explain how emerging technologies, such as blockchain technology, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT) and other digital infrastructures can be used to build secure digital supply networks into the future.
Victoria has become a prominent transport and logistic hub in Australia, with Melbourne at the centre of several key supply chains. Melbourne’s CBD is known as the fastest growing small area of the country.
The city is strategically located with several major ports, roads, rail, airports and transport hubs that are well networked to move products through to local, regional, interstate and international markets.
Analysing the area’s supply chain challenges is critical to understanding the shocks that continue to disrupt larger economies, and how businesses can overcome such supply and demand uncertainty.
Objectives and aims
Published by RMIT’s Blockchain Innovation Hub, the Centre for Cyber Security Research & Innovation and the Digital Ethnography Research Centre, the report highlights research opportunities and policy recommendations for building more resilient and just supply chains towards a digital CBD.
The report’s foreword, provided by RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub Co-Director Associate Professor, Chris Berg, discusses how supply chains “were hardly viewed as a central public policy issue” prior to COVID-19.
However, the pandemic has shown industry that supply chains matter, and both policy actors and scholars need to bring the complex supply chain networks into their understanding of the larger economy.
This report aims to explore two research objectives. The first objective is proving a deeper understanding of the issues and challenges supply chains faced due to the twin shocks of a simultaneous pandemic and economic crisis.
The second objective is to explain how emerging technologies and other digital infrastructures can be used to build secure digital supply networks that can reduce the information asymmetries and enhance collaboration, agility and optimisation whilst embedding just and fairer practices into digital processes.
Melbourne’s digital age
The report found that, after reviewing the impact of COVID-19 on supply chains, the supply and demand shocks were caused by four key supply chain issues, including:
♦ Sudden workforce shortages
♦ Transportation and logistics disruptions
♦ Insufficient knowledge across the full supply chain network
♦ Increased number of security breaches and attacks in digital supply chains
The report’s co-author, Dr Tharuka Rupasinghe from RMIT’s Blockchain Innovation Hub, said “integrating digitalisation” is key to resolving these supply chain disruptions, now and in the future.
“Melbourne needs resilient supply chains that respond to shocks and threats with the ability to adapt to changing conditions,” Dr Rupasinghe said. “The city has the potential to be a testbed for autonomous vehicles and to develop a blockchain pilot.”
The report states that supply chains all around the world have been revolutionised by automated or driverless technologies, such as autonomous vehicles, robotics and drones, and that Victoria could develop the policies and shared infrastructure, and put in place incentives to trial the technology within Melbourne, positioning the city as a global leader in “autonomous last mile-delivery”.
The report also claims that, in combination with other emerging technologies, blockchain technology “has a myriad of benefits and can create more efficient, effective and resilient supply chains”.
Critical recommendations
The report recommends that the Victorian Government create a blockchain-based supply chain pilot, highlighting the construction industry as “a great example” of an industry that would benefit from such a pilot.
The report also proposes the following five recommendations for the Victorian Government to action:
♦ The use of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) as a digital twin to mitigate against fraud, theft and loss
♦ Standardising supply chain cyber security requirements to support cyber resilience and mitigate against risks when operationalising emerging technologies
♦ Creating a supply chain data and governance framework
♦ Uplifting digital skills within supply chains
Associate Professor Berg said the report highlights how new technologies, such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, can facilitate innovation in supply chains that provides greater resilience and adaptability.
“At first glance, a single city might be a strange framework to think about supply chains when we associate supply chains with large-scale global networks rather than the urban and suburban environments of a city,” Associate Professor Berg said.
“But as this report shows, the city is shaped by supply chains both large and small. As economic activity shifts, as it did during the pandemic, so too supply chains are restructured around the new demands and environments.”
Ultimately, the report found that emerging technologies and digital infrastructures, such as NFTs, smart sensors, drones, autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence forecasting, would reduce the vulnerabilities in Melbourne’s supply chain, as highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This report is the third report in a five-part series commissioned by the Victorian Higher Education State Investment Fund (VHESIF). The report has been available for download since 12 May 2022.
About the project
RMIT Research Centres – the Blockchain Innovation Hub, Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation and the Digital Ethnography Research Centre — have come together to conduct large-scale research into the acceleration of digital technology directly impacted by COVID-19 and consequently, the opportunity areas for a digital CBD.
For further information, please visit https://www.rmit.edu.au/partner/research-partnerships/future-digital-cbd
