Models for Evaluating and Planning City Logistics Systems

TLDR

City logistics seeks to reduce freight‑transport nuisances in urban areas while supporting economic and social development by treating stakeholders as components of an integrated system. The study aims to optimize advanced urban transportation systems by tackling integrated short‑term scheduling in a two‑tiered distribution structure, introducing a new problem class, and proposing a general model and formulations. The authors coordinate shippers, carriers, and movements, consolidating loads into eco‑friendly vehicles, and develop a general model and formulations for the integrated short‑term scheduling problem.

Abstract

City logistics aims to reduce the nuisances associated to freight transportation in urban areas while supporting their economic and social development. The fundamental idea is to view individual stakeholders and decisions as components of an integrated logistics system. This implies the coordination of shippers, carriers, and movements as well as the consolidation of loads of several customers and carriers into the same environment-friendly vehicles. City logistics explicitly aims to optimize such advanced urban transportation systems. We focus on a challenging city logistics planning issue, the integrated short-term scheduling of operations and management of resources, for the general case involving a two-tiered distribution structure. We investigate the main issues related to the problem, introduce a new problem class, propose both a general model and formulations for the main system components, and identify promising solution avenues.