Logistics sprawl in monocentric and polycentric metropolitan areas: the cases of Paris, France, and the Randstad, the Netherlands

The phenomenon of urban sprawl has been studied extensively. Most research so far has focused on residential settlements. A growing number of studies have addressed industrial deconcentration. Our focus in this paper is on logistics sprawl, i.e. the growth and suburban relocation of warehousing activities. Specifically, we investigate the difference in logistics sprawl between monocentric and polycentric systems of cities. The literature suggests that logistics activities, like residential settlements, will gradually move to suburbs as land prices increase in central areas. As research for logistics has mostly focused on monocentric systems, the question is whether this also applies to polycentric systems. We compare two cases, the Paris region in France, representative of a monocentric development, and the Dutch Randstad area as a polycentric case. We use regional statistics on warehouse settlements in both regions for a descriptive analysis of changes since the mid 2000s to derive metrics for concentration. The cases show different patterns of change in concentration. In contrast to Paris, logistics activities within the Randstad have intensified in dense areas. We explore the reasons that may explain this difference and conclude that urban structure, spatial planning policies and the freight hub quality of a region are factors of influence.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF ENERGY TRANSITION ON SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY

The oil and gas (O&G) industry is increasingly pressured to manage its supply chain sustainably due to the negative impact of its activities and products on the environment and society. Unsustainable exploitation of the O&G has also led to concerns about its future availability, thus the security of energy supply. These issues resulted in the call for the transition to an energy system that favours low carbon and renewable sources. The O&G are expected to respond to these pressures by developing strategies that could enhance its competitiveness and compatibility with the future energy systems. As yet, little is known about the strategies especially with regard to sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) aspects. Therefore, this study aims to add to the discussion by focusing on understanding the implications of energy transition to SSCM practices in the O&G industry. It employs content analysis of sustainability reports of 30 O&G companies. The findings indicate that although 18 companies are involved in the research and development of alternative energy, the main focus is on developing unconventional O&G to increase fuel supply bases. In addition, among the alternatives, biofuels is the most preferred energy option due to its compatibility with the companies’ existing business and infrastructure. Overall, there are considerable limitations in the discussions of the SSCM strategy in the reports. We find that the sustainability of the unconventionals’ production processes received more attention than supplier and logistics management. The strategies for sustainable supply chain of the alternatives, except for biofuels, are hardly discussed or absent from the report. The findings could be useful to industry practitioners in decision making processes to improve existing SSCM practices during the transition, and to academics to identify areas for further investigations.Â

Logistics sprawl in monocentric and polycentric metropolitan areas: The cases of Paris, France, and the Randstad, the Netherlands

The phenomenon of urban sprawl has been studied extensively. Most research so far has focused on residential settlements. A growing number of studies have addressed industrial deconcentration. Our focus in this paper is on logistics sprawl, i.e. the growth and suburban relocation of warehousing activities. Specifically, we investigate the difference in logistics sprawl between monocentric and polycentric systems of cities. The literature suggests that logistics activities, like residential settlements, will gradually move to suburbs as land prices increase in central areas. As research for logistics has mostly focused on monocentric systems, the question is whether this also applies to polycentric systems. We compare two cases, the Paris region in France, representative of a monocentric development, and the Dutch Randstad area as a polycentric case. We use regional statistics on warehouse settlements in both regions for a descriptive analysis of changes since the mid 2000s to derive metrics for concentration. The cases show different patterns of change in concentration. In contrast to Paris, logistics activities within the Randstad have intensified in dense areas. We explore the reasons that may explain this difference and conclude that urban structure, spatial planning policies and the freight hub quality of a region are factors of influence.Transport and LogisticsTransport and Plannin

Data Fusion Approach to Identify Distribution Chain Segments in Freight Shipment Databases

Understanding the logistic determinants of freight trips is an important goal in freight transport modeling. Freight shipments move between nodes in the supply chain for different logistic purposes, including production, storage, transshipment, and consumption. A key problem with data availability is that databases generally do not identify these purposes, given the commercial sensitivity of the data. In addition, including information on senders and receivers of the shipments is often prohibitively costly. Therefore, one of the challenges of transport data analysis is to identify freight trip purposes using data fusion, linking information about the main function of logistics nodes to trips in existing databases. This paper proposes a data fusion approach to enrich big truck shipment databases with firm registry data. We use the national freight shipment micro-database from the Netherlands which includes shipment, vehicle, and tour information. Although our presentation here uses formats and methods of accounting for freight data used in the Netherlands, it can be readily replicated for conditions in other countries, as long as similar data sets on shipment data and firm registry are available. The enriched, new database contains transport and firm data for more than 2 million observed trips with information on the vehicle used, shipments carried, and sender/receiver firm. An initial descriptive analysis provides unique empirical insights into the logistic determinants of freight trips. These include the share of national trips that use intermediate nodes, typical changes in shipment sizes, and the role of distribution centers for (de)consolidation of shipments.freight transportation data, shipment database, distribution centers data, freight big data, and data fusio

Identifying tour structures in freight transport by mining of large trip databases

Scheduling and Routing in freight transport are usually the end products of an optimization process. However, the results may differ due to the heterogeneity of rules in different transport markets. Since the understanding of these decision rules is important for disaggregate freight modeling, this paper investigates the development of an effective decision tree method for extracting them from an extensive freight transport data. We applied the method to model departure time and type of tours in freight transport of agricultural products. Having these two models together help us understand the whole anatomy of the freight activities for the selected transport segment. The models highlight the characteristics of time-of-day freight activities for this sector and indicate the importance of spatial and temporal characteristics in capturing the distinctions of the type of tours.</p

Analysis of the air cargo transport network using a complex network theory perspective

In this paper, we present a complex network analysis of the air transport network using the air cargo, instead of the passenger, perspective. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work where a global cargo network comprising passenger airlines, full-cargo airlines, and integrators’ capacity was studied. We used estimated yearly cargo capacity between airport pairs as input to the model. After assessing network characteristics of the sub-networks representing different carrier types, the full network was obtained as a super-imposition of the individual sub-networks. The resulting network has both small-world and scale-free characteristics. Its topological properties resulted in a higher flow imbalance and concentration with respect to its passenger counterpart, with a smaller characteristic path length and diameter. This result is consistent with the larger catchment area of cargo airports, which heavily rely on road feeder services for the ground leg. Finally, we showed how different attack strategies result in hubs of hub-and-spoke systems or airports behaving as bridges between communities being attacked first. We believe this work to be of relevance both for academics and for practitioners in an era where, due to the soaring of e-commerce and next day delivery, new players are entering the air cargo business and competition is constantly increasing.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Aerospace Transport & OperationsTransport and PlanningTransport and Logistic

De Distributiestructuur Van Het Goederen Wegvervoer In NL

Goederenvervoer is het transport gedeelte van het logistieke systeem: goederen worden van A naar B vervoerd. Een groot gedeelte is onderdeel van logistieke ketens. Waar data over goederenvervoer in toenemende mate beschikbaar is voor onderzoek en planningsdoeleinden, blijft de beschikbaarheid van logistieke data schaars.In deze bijdrage presenteren wij de resultaten van een data gedreven onderzoek waarbij ‘big’ tripdata van transporteurs zijn geanalyseerd op distributiestructuren. Uitdaging daarbij is de transport data te verrijken met logistieke informatie: vond deze rit plaats vanuit een multimodale terminal, een distributiecentra, of kwam deze vanaf een producent? Op de TU Delft hebben we een effectieve methode opgezet om structurele distributiepatronen te ontdekken, ondanks de data-inefficiënties.De resultaten geven een relevante inkijk in distributiestructuren voor verschillende segmenten in het goederenvervoer: informatie die tot nog toe nog ontbreekt

A sectoral perspective on distribution structure design

This paper studies the factors that drive distribution structure design (DSD), which includes the spatial layout of distribution channels and location choice of logistics facilities. We build on a generic framework from existing literature, which we validate and elaborate using interviews among industry practitioners. Empirical evidence was collected from 18 logistics experts and 33 decision-makers affiliated to shippers and logistics service providers from the fashion, consumer electronics and online retail sectors. It turns out that interviewees share similar rankings of main factors across industries, and even confirm factor weights from earlier research established using multi-criteria decision analysis, which would indicate that the framework is sector-neutral at the highest level. The importance attached to subfactors varies between sectors according to our expectations. We were able to identify 20 possible new influencing subfactors. The results may support managers in their decision-making process, and regional policy-makers with regard to spatial planning and regional marketing. The framework is a basis for researchers to help improve further quantitative DSD support models.</p