2,768 research outputs found
Integrating urban last-mile package deliveries into an agent-based travel demand model
With the expected increase of e-commerce activity, we can expect the share of delivery vehicles in cities to rise as well. On the one hand, this puts great pressure on cities and surrounding areas as emissions rise and space becomes scarce. On the other hand, people are adjusting their travel behaviour such that the increase in e-commerce affects not only last-mile delivery but also private passenger traffic. This paper presents an integrated approach of modelling last-mile deliveries using an agent-based travel demand model. It is intended to account for reciprocal effects between online shopping behaviour and last-mile deliveries. The package orders are generated by agents in the study area and distributed among the package centres. For each package centre, the tour for each delivery agent is created. The presented model allows for the simultaneous simulation of private trips and last-mile deliveries and thus realistic delivery conditions: the model can detect e.g. if an agent or another household member is at home to receive their order. We have applied the model to the city of Karlsruhe, Germany, and describe first results of that simulation. Application of the model allows for a detailed analysis e.g. of delivery success rates both in terms of time and space. The presented modelling framework provides insight into effects of last-mile deliveries on a transportation system and can be availed to analyse policy measures or alternative delivery strategies
Spatial and Temporal Characteristics of Freight Tours: A Data-Driven Exploratory Analysis
This paper presents a modeling approach to infer scheduling and routing
patterns from digital freight transport activity data for different freight
markets. We provide a complete modeling framework including a new
discrete-continuous decision tree approach for extracting rules from the
freight transport data. We apply these models to collected tour data for the
Netherlands to understand departure time patterns and tour strategies, also
allowing us to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. We find
that spatial and temporal characteristics are important to capture the types of
tours and time-of-day patterns of freight activities. Also, the empirical
evidence indicates that carriers in most of the transport markets are sensitive
to the level of congestion. Many of them adjust the type of tour, departure
time, and the number of stops per tour when facing a congested zone. The
results can be used by practitioners to get more grip on transport markets and
develop freight and traffic management measures
Seven fat years or seven lean years for freight transport modelling? Developments since 2013.
Freight transport modelling has seen many developments in this century. A key trend was the inclusion of more aspects of logistics thinking in freight transport models for the public sector. In de Jong et al. (2013) is a list of topics that were expected to be the main areas for further development in freight transport modelling in the next decade. The current paper describes the developments that have actually taken place in modelling freight transport, at the international, national, regional, and urban level, and compares these to the list in the 2013 paper
Inflation, Inequality and Social Conflict
This paper presents a political economy model of inflation as a result of social conflict. Agents are heterogeneous in terms of income. Agents' income levels determine their ability to hedge against the effects of inflation. The interaction of heterogeneous cash holdings and preferences over fiscal policy leads to conflict over how to finance government expenditure. The model makes a number of predictions concerning which environments are conducive to the emergence of inflation. Inflation will tend to be higher in countries with higher inequality and with greater pro-rich bias in the political system. Conversely, the use of income tax will be higher in countries with lower inequality and less pro-rich bias. The model also predicts that although inequality and political bias will have an impact on the composition of revenue, it will have no effect on the overall level of government spending (assuming that spending is on public goods only). These results are largely confirmed by the empirical portion of the paper. The paper's novel features are its simplifications at the household level which allow for richer treatment of the income distribution and political process than in the related literature. The paper also gives unequivocal comparative statics results under relatively undemanding assumptions.probabilistic voting, distributional conflict, fiscal policy, inequality, inflation
Digital Twins for Logistics and Supply Chain Systems: Literature Review, Conceptual Framework, Research Potential, and Practical Challenges
To facilitate an effective, efficient, transparent, and timely
decision-making process as well as to provide guidelines for industry planning
and public policy development, a conceptual framework of digital twins (DTs)
for logistics and supply chain systems (LSCS) is needed. This paper first
introduces the background of the logistics and supply chain industry, the DT
and its potential benefits, and the motivations and scope of this research. The
literature review indicates research and practice gaps and needs that motivate
proposing a new conceptual DT framework for LSCS. As each element of the new
framework has different requirements and goals, it initiates new research
opportunities and creates practical implementation challenges. As such, the
future of DT computation involves advanced analytics and modeling techniques to
address the new agenda's requirements. Finally, ideas on the next steps to
deploy a transparent, trustworthy, and resilient DT for LSCS are presented.Comment: 45 page
The Economics of Infrastructure Investment: Beyond Simple Cost Benefit Analysis
This non-technical âthink-pieceâ examines aspects of infrastructure project evaluation, concentrating on circumstances that may render a standard cost benefit analysis (CBA) inappropriate. It is designed to make infrastructure investors and planners think deeply about their assumptions and to broaden the range of issues that are taken into account. Issues considered include: the role of CBA; network effects (increasing returns to scale) and the endogeneity of resources within an economy; the valuation of productive versus consumptive benefits; the value of traded versus non-traded sector production; the role and choice of the discount rate; and the importance of considering option values when making infrastructure investment and disinvestment decisions.Infrastructure, Cost Benefit Analysis, Evaluation
Applications of Negotiation Theory to Water Issues
The purpose of the paper is to review the applications of non-cooperative bargaining theory to water related issues â which fall in the category of formal models of negotiation. The ultimate aim is that to, on the one hand, identify the conditions under which agreements are likely to emerge, and their characteristics; and, on the other hand, to support policy makers in devising the ârules of the gameâ that could help obtain a desired result. Despite the fact that allocation of natural resources, especially of trans-boundary nature, has all the characteristics of a negotiation problem, there are not many applications of formal negotiation theory to the issue. Therefore, this paper first discusses the non-cooperative bargaining models applied to water allocation problems found in the literature. Particular attention will be given to those directly modelling the process of negotiation, although some attempts at finding strategies to maintain the efficient allocation solution will also be illustrated. In addition, this paper will focus on Negotiation Support Systems (NSS), developed to support the process of negotiation. This field of research is still relatively new, however, and NSS have not yet found much use in real life negotiation. The paper will conclude by highlighting the key remaining gaps in the literature.Negotiation theory, Water, Agreeements, Stochasticity, Stakeholders
Modellbasierte Ermittlung von verkehrlichen Potentialen eines stadtbahnbasierten GĂŒtertransports im Projekt LogIKTram in Karlsruhe
Als Reaktion auf das steigende Paketaufkommen werden neue, nachhaltige Konzepte der City-Logistik gesucht. Eine Lösung kann die Nutzung der bestehenden stĂ€dtischen Schieneninfrastruktur ĂŒber Cargo Trams sein. Um die verkehrlichen Wirkungen eines derartigen Konzepts quantifizieren zu können, wird in dieser Arbeit ein GĂŒterverkehrsmodell fĂŒr den Pakettransport, mit Fokus auf gewerbliche Paketnachfrage, vorgestellt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass durch eine Cargo Tram grundsĂ€tzlich positive Effekte auf den Verkehr zu erwarten sind. Das Potenzial hĂ€ngt jedoch stark von verschiedenen Faktoren wie der Anzahl und Lage der City Hubs ab
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