Mixing quantitative and qualitative methods for sustainable transportation in Smart Cities

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

A Taxonomic Analysis of Smart City Projects in North America and Europe

In recent years, the concept of a “Smart City” became central in the agenda of researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders. Although the application of information and communication technologies on city management has advanced exponentially, also other components would be needed for building a truly sustainable urban environment. Researchers from different domains debated the definition of a smart city and the conceptual variants. However, a broad view of the smart city field is still missing. This paper attempts to fill this gap by proposing a taxonomic classification of the most 105 outstanding smart city projects in Europe and North America. Collected data are then processed by statistical tools for clearly highlighting the success factors, trends and future paths in which all these projects are moving, along with different aspects (e.g., business model, purpose, industry). We then investigate the European and the North American Smart City concepts, illustrating the key role of mixed public and private partnerships in creating successful projects and the focus on the urban transportation, and freight and last-mile delivery in particular. Moreover, it emerges how the business modeling and the exploitation aspects have still low integration in the projects

The European Concept of Smart City: A Taxonomic Analysis

The concept of “Smart City” became widely debated, including different components for building a truly sustainable urban environment. In the literature, there is a huge number of contributions inherent to the definition of a smart city, however, a broad view of the field is still missing. The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to provide a repeatable and scalable methodology that can be applied to unstructured documents on smart cities projects considering all the multi-facet aspects of a smart city (e.g., business model, technology). Secondly, to propose an analysis carried out with a taxonomy to a database of 25 outstanding smart city projects in Europe, to discuss the current direction in which they are moving, identifying success factors and analyzing new trends and future paths

Decision support system for collaborative freight transportation management: a tool for mixing traditional and green logistics.

In recent years, freight transportation emerged as a key factor in the development and dynamicity of countries, although it has a considerably impact on urban areas, due to the environmental issues. In this context, several stakeholders have implemented City Logistics solutions in order to make transportation more sustainable and efficient. This paper proposes a case study concerning the collaborative transportation system involving traditional and green couriers, in the city of Turin. This freight pooling is supported by a decision support system that combines the ERP “Odoo” with an algorithm for the optimization planning of routes. This decision support system is described in the second section and finally, some results obtained from its application are discussed

A simulation-optimization approach for the management of the on-demand parcel delivery in sharing economy

the use of multiple delivery options and crowd drivers, reflecting the synchromodality in the urban context. We propose a multi-stage stochastic model, and we solve the problem by using a simulation-optimization strategy. It relies on a Monte Carlo simulation and a large neighborhood search (LNS) heuristic for optimization. We conduct a case study in the medium-sized city of Turin (Italy) to measure the potential impact of integrating cargo bikes and crowd drivers in parcel delivery. Experimental results show that combining crowd drivers and green carriers with the traditional van to manage the parcel delivery is beneficial in terms of economic and environmental cost-saving, while the operational efficiency decreases. Besides, the green carriers and crowd drivers are promising delivery options to deal with online customer requests in the context of stochastic and dynamic parcel delivery. The resulting set of policies are part of the outcomes of the Logistics and Mobility Plan 2019-2021 in the Piedmont region

Blockchain in Logistics and Supply Chain: A Lean Approach for Designing Real-World Use Cases

The Blockchain technology can be defined as a distributed ledger database for recording transactions between parties verifiably and permanently. Blockchain emerged as a leading technology layer for financial applications. Nevertheless, in the past years, the attention of researchers and practitioners moved to the application of the Blockchain technologies to other domains. Recently, it represents the backbone of a new digital supply chain. Thanks to its capability of ensuring data immutability and public accessibility of data streams, Blockchain can increase the efficiency, reliability, and transparency of the overall supply chain, and optimize the inbound processes. The literature concerning Blockchain in non-financial applications mainly focused on the technological part and the Business Process Modeling, lacking in terms of standard methodology for designing a strategy to develop and validate the overall Blockchain solution and integrate it in the Business Strategy. Thus, this paper aims to overcome this lack. First, we integrate the current literature filling the lack concerning the digital strategy, creating a standard methodology to design Blockchain technology use cases, which are not related to finance applications. Second, we present the results of a use case in the fresh food delivery, showing the critical aspects of implementing a Blockchain solution. Moreover, the paper discusses how the Blockchain will help in reducing the logistics costs and in optimizing the operations and the research challenges

Investigating the environmental awareness of Logistics Service Providers. The case of Italy

Environmental sustainability in transportation operations is acquiring an increasing importance in recent years and a lot of Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) are including green practices in their business. However, the interests of logistics operators and the related level of awareness about the adoption of environmental friendly practices are still not deeply analyzed in literature. Therefore, the proposed paper is intended to investigate the perception of LSPs about the environmental issues and their willingness of pursuing future green strategies. To this end, based on a literature analysis aimed at identifying a comprehensive list of green practices, a questionnaire survey is administered to LSPs operating in the Italian market. The data gathered are then analyzed via the Kruskal-Wallis test and the questionnaire outcomes discussed with the LSPs participating to the survey through face to face interviews. Results show that the environment is highly considered by the freight carriers of the sample, both small and large ones. In addition, personnel involved in different company roles appear to pay diverse levels of attention to the sustainability issue. In particular, the reduction of pollutant is considered more crucial for employees in charge of dealing with operations (median equal to 5) and reverse logistics is perceived less important by managers (median equal to 3). The outcomes of the study might support companies to achieve sustainability and promote the green awareness issue. At the same time, policy makers might be facilitated by this study in designing environmental friendly programs in the logistics field

A Managerial Analysis of Urban Parcel Delivery: A Lean Business Approach

The improper integration of traditional transportation modes with low emissions vehicles can generate a price war that reduces the service quality, undermining the efficiency and the profitability of parcel delivery operators. This paper aims to provide managerial insights to design a win-win strategy for the co-existence of traditional and green business models. In doing so, we adopt a multi-disciplinary approach that integrates a qualitative analysis through a Lean Business methodology, named GUEST, with a quantitative analysis based on simulation-optimisation techniques. This kind of holistic vision has received little attention in the literature. The first analysis investigates the parcel delivery industry with an emphasis on the main business models involved, their costs and revenues structures, while the quantitative part aims to simulate the system and extract sustainable policies. In particular, results highlight that in deploying mixed-fleet policies, the decision-makers have to focus both on the environmental sustainability that benefits from the adoption of low-emission vehicles, and on the operational feasibility and economic sustainability of the two services. In this direction, the paper suggests some managerial insights concerning the split of the customer demand between traditional and green operators, according to the classes of parcels and geographical areas of the city

Internet of Things in urban waste collection

Nowadays, the waste collection management has an important role in urban areas. This paper faces this issue and proposes the application of a metaheuristic for the optimization of a weekly schedule and routing of the waste collection activities in an urban area. Differently to several contributions in literature, fixed periodic routes are not imposed. The results significantly improve the performance of the company involved, both in terms of resources used and costs saving