Managing last-mile urban freight transport through emerging information and communication technologies: a systemic literature review

Up-to-today, urban logistics has shown significant relevance around the world because of the numerous problems due to the increase in freight flows in the cities driven by the changes occurring, e.g., smaller and more frequent deliveries. The irreversibility of these processes is pushing researchers to look for theoretical and practical approaches to address changes to improve sustainability. Therefore, the need to develop new methods and models to govern urban freight transport are emerging and the evolution of information and communication technologies (ICT) have opened the road to develop and implement new advanced approaches to manage sustainable urban last-mile freight transport. In particular, they are mainly devoted to support traffic management and control, and land planning through the integrated use of ICT, which allows one to optimise freight traffic by collaborating fleet management, advanced urban supply chain integration, and so on. In order to capture the current state of research and to identify the future challenges, a systemic review is presented

A Scheduling Strategy of Mobile Parcel Lockers for the Last Mile Delivery Problem

In the form of unattended Collection-and-Delivery Points (CDP), the fixed parcel lockers can save courier miles and improve the delivery efficiency. However, due to the fixed location and combination, the fixed parcel locker cannot accommodate the change of demands effectively. In this paper, an approach to supplementing fixed lockers by mobile parcel lockers to meet the demands of the last mile delivery has been proposed. With the goal of minimizing the operating cost, the location and route optimization problems of mobile parcel lockers are integrated into a non-linear integer programming model. An embedded GA has been developed to optimally determine the locations of distribution points, the number of mobile parcel lockers needed by each distribution point and the schedules and routes of mobile parcel lockers, simultaneously. Finally, a numerical example is given to compare the optimization results of the schemes with and without the aggregation problem. The results show that the scheme with the aggregation problem can greatly save the delivery time. However, for the scheme without the aggregation problem, time windows are more continuous, so it saves the number of vehicles

Contributions to sustainable urban transport : decision support for alternative mobility and logistics concepts

Increasing transport activities in cities are a substantial driver for congestion and pollution, influencing urban populations’ health and quality of life. These effects are consequences of ongoing urbanization in combination with rising individual demand for mobility, goods, and services. With the goal of increased environmental sustainability in urban areas, city authorities and politics aim for reduced traffic and minimized transport emissions. To support more efficient and sustainable urban transport, this cumulative dissertation focuses on alternative transport concepts. For this purpose, scientific methods and models of the interdisciplinary information systems domain combined with elements of operations research, transportation, and logistics are developed and investigated in multiple research contributions. Different transport concepts are examined in terms of optimization and acceptance to provide decision support for relevant stakeholders. In more detail, the overarching topic of urban transport in this dissertation is divided into the complexes urban mobility (part A) in terms of passenger transport and urban logistics (part B) with a focus on the delivery of goods and services. Within part A, approaches to carsharing optimization are presented at various planning levels. Furthermore, the user acceptance of ridepooling is investigated. Part B outlines several optimization models for alternative urban parcel and e-grocery delivery concepts by proposing different network structures and transport vehicles. Conducted surveys on intentional use of urban logistics concepts give valuable hints to providers and decision makers. The introduced approaches with their corresponding results provide target-oriented support to facilitate decision making based on quantitative data. Due to the continuous growth of urban transport, the relevance of decision support in this regard, but also the understanding of the key drivers for people to use certain services will further increase in the future. By providing decision support for urban mobility as well as urban logistics concepts, this dissertation contributes to enhanced economic, social, and environmental sustainability in urban areas

Policy approaches for placing parcel lockers in public space

This paper explores policy approaches for parcel lockers in public space. While last- mile delivery service providers primarily focus on the economic and customer service benefits of parcel lockers, securing approval from local governments to place lockers in public spaces requires justification of their public value. Our study identifies six factors that decisionmakers can consider when evaluating requests for parcel locker placement: carbon emissions, nuisances of the delivery vehicle, nuisances at a locker location, customer preferences, innovation, and the pull effect of parcel lockers. Through a series of semi-structured interviews and a workshop with public decisionmakers in cities across the Netherlands and Europe, we find that delivery vehicle nuisances and potential new nuisances at the locker location are important factors for decisionmakers at local government. Our study reveals two distinct approaches taken by local governments when facing requests for parcel locker placement in public spaces: reactive and proactive. Overall, this study contributes to the understanding of the policy perspective on parcel lockers in public spaces and provides insights for sustainable urban logistics planning

Reusing newspaper kiosks for last-mile delivery in urban areas

Producción CientíficaThe current increase in e-commerce is generating growing problems in urban areas in terms of both traffic flow (increasing traffic, no parking spaces) and environmental issues (noise, atmospheric pollution, etc.). In parallel, an iconic element of historic districts is disappearing: more and more newspaper kiosks are closing their business as their work dwindles. In this scenario, the objective of this paper is to propose a model for last-mile parcel delivery that exploits the current available newspaper kiosk network by using them as parcel lockers. To demonstrate the benefits of this proposal, we map the kiosk network of the city of Valladolid (Spain), and compare the environmental impact of a traditional (door-to-door) delivery and the proposed model which reuses old kiosks as parcel lockers. The necessary steps to carry out simulations are described in detail so that experiments can be replicated in other cities that face the same issues.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad - (Project DPI2016-78902-P)Ayuntamiento de Valladolid - (Project AI-19/2018