Book Description

Modern cities are facing the growing problem of congestion, poor air quality and lack of public space. To ameliorate the condition of goods transport in cities, sustainable city logistics planning is essential. It requires a collaborative approach among city logistics stakeholders for consolidated goods distribution inside city centers to minimize their negative impacts on city residents and their environment. The book presents theoretical studies, state of the art, and practical applications in the area of sustainable city logistics. It is composed of nine chapters. A brief description of the various chapters is provided as follows: Chapter 1 by Sharfuddin Ahmed Khan and Syed Tahaur Rehman presents a review of literature and future prospects on sustainable city logistics. Globalization, governmental rules, and regulations enforce decision makers and managers to incorporate sustainability in every aspect of their decision making (DM) specifically in city logistics. The area of sustainable city logistics is still in its developing stage and not many authors explore sustainability aspects in city logistics. The focus of this chapter is to review existing literature related to city logistics that considered sustainability in DM. A total of 40 articles that were published between 2010 to 2019 have been considered and categorized in terms of objective of study, area of research focus such as qualitative, quantitative, case study etc., and multi criteria DM methods. Finally, future prospects and directions has been proposed in sustainable city logistics. Chapter 2 by Sättar Ezzati presents challenges and opportunities in maritime logistics empty container repositioning. Maritime logistics and freight transportation are extensive and complex sectors that involve large material resources and represent intricate relationships between trade-off the various decisions and policies affecting different components. Because of the globalization, e-market and high level of customization trends, the sector has faced diversified challenges on different levels of planning including designing, scheduling, fleet sizing, decisions about container ownership, leasing and empty container repositioning, uncertainty and collaboration opportunities that already has provoked advanced coordination and intelligent optimization techniques for its global operations from strategic and tactical perspectives. Large attention of this chapter concentrates on empty containers repositioning problem and potential pathways to address this issue and how container shipping companies can handle this challenge with the help of operations research techniques from the perspectives of shipping business industry. To do so, this chapter presents a comprehensive and systematic literature review mainly focused on recent publications correspond to these logistics that maritime industries are facing. Chapter 3 by Yisha Luo, Ali Alaghbandrad, Tersoo Kelechukwu, and Amin Hammad addresses the theme of smart multi-purpose utility tunnels. In terms of sustainable practices, the conventional method of open cut utility installation has proven to be a short-term solution, considering its negative impact on the environment, and its social disruptive nature. An alternative to open cut utility installation is Multi-purpose Utility Tunnels (MUTs), as it offers an economic, sustainable, and easy to manage and inspect method of utility placement. The risks associated with MUTs are both natural and manmade. As a way of tackling these risks, smart MUTs with the use of sensors will reduce the effects of the risks while supporting the operation and maintenance processes for MUT operators. To enhance decision making, data collected from the sensors are used in the MUT Information Modelling (MUTIM). MUTIM includes the utility tunnel structural model with utilities, equipment, sensors, and devices that can be used for emergency management increasing the sustainability and resilience of smart cities. Chapter 4 by Léonard Ryo Morin, Fabian Bastin, Emma Frejinger, and Martin Trépanier model truck route choices in an urban area using a recursive logit model and GPS data. They explore the use of GPS devices to capture heavy truck routes in the Montreal urban road network. The main focus lies on trips that originate or depart from intermodal terminals (rail yard, port). They descriptively analyse GPS data and use the data to estimate a recursive logit model by means of maximum likelihood. The results show the main factors affecting the route choice decisions. Using this type of predictive models when planning and designing the transport network nearby intermodal terminals could offer opportunities to reduce the negative impacts on truck movements, as the CO2 emissions. Chapter 5 by Akolade Adegoke presents a literature review on benchmarking port sustainability performance. Sustainable development agendas are challenging the world and ports, in particular, to find ways to become more efficient while meeting economic, social and environmental objectives. Although there has been a considerable body of documentation on port green practices and performance in Europe and America, there is limited synthesis about evaluation of sustainable practices in the context of Canadian ports. This chapter provides a review of literature and initiatives employed by global ports authorities and identifies major sustainability performance indicators. Chapter 6 by Silke Hoehl, Kai-Oliver Schocke, and Petra Schaefer presents analysis and recommendations of delivery strategies in urban and suburban areas. A research series about commercial transport started in the region of Frankfurt/Main (Germany) started in 2014. The first project dealt with the commercial transport in the city centre of Frankfurt/Main. One hypothesis was that CEP vehicles are congesting the streets. A data base was built by collecting data in two streets in the centre of Frankfurt. Contrary to the expectation a significant part of commercial transport is caused by vehicles of craftsmen. After that, in 2016 the second project examined the delivery strategies of four CEP companies in Frankfurt. One research question was if CEP companies use different delivery strategies in different parts of the city. Therefore 40 delivery tours were accompanied and data was collected e.g. number of stops, number of parcels per stops, car type, transport situation, parking situation, shift lengths or GPS-track. In parallel, the traffic situation in several districts of Frankfurt were analyzed. In a third part, the two streams were put together to recommend delivery strategies for CEP-companies as well as useful insights for local authorities. As a third project of the research series a new project has just begun. The study area has been extended to the entire RheinMain region. It deals with the commercial transport and faces the challenge to manage commercial transport at a low emission level. On the one hand, the methodologies of the two preceding projects will be applied to a suburban area in the region. Recommendations will be developed. On the other hand, loading zones for electric vehicles in Frankfurt will be identified and developed. After that, a conference will give a wide overview of existing delivery concepts. By pointing out critical situations in the delivery chain, the whole last mile will be described. Chapter 7 by Shuai Ma, Jia Yu, and Ahmet Satir presents a scheme for sequential decision making with a risk-sensitive objective and constraints in a dynamic scenario. A neural network is trained as an approximator of the mapping from parameter space to space of risk and policy with risk-sensitive constraints. For a given risk-sensitive problem, in which the objective and constraints are, or can be estimated by, functions of the mean and variance of return, we generate a synthetic dataset as training data. Parameters defining a targeted process might be dynamic, i.e., they might vary over time, so we sample them within specified intervals to deal with these dynamics. We show that: i). Most risk measures can be estimated with the return variance; ii). By virtue of the state-augmentation transformation, practical problems modeled by Markov decision processes with stochastic rewards can be solved in a risk-sensitive scenario; and iii). The proposed scheme is validated by a numerical experiment. Chapter 8 by J.H.R. van Duin, B. Enserink, J.J. Daleman, and M. Vaandrager addresses the theme of sustainable alternatives selection for parcel delivery. The GHG-emissions of the transport sector are still increasing. This trend is accompanied by the strong growth of the e-commerce sector, leading to more transport movements on our road networks. In order to mitigate the externalities of the e-commerce related parcel delivery market and try to make it more sustainable, the following research question has been drafted: How could the last mile parcel delivery process beco