Sustainable Urban Freight Mobility through Optimization of Logistics Facility Locations

The growing mitigation rates towards urban zones, global use of e-commerce and advancing technologies implemented in the logistics operations are the main contributors to the constant increase of product delivery volumes, especially in metropolitan areas. Furthermore, the need for sustainable development has been highlighted, due to the great extent that the matter of environmental impacts caused by transportation systems has taken in todays’ urban centers. These aspects provide a clear indication of the urban freight transport systems’ necessity of providing reliable, cost-efficient and environmentally-friendly services. Logistics providers are required to address many strategic operational issues while designing their distribution networks. One of the most essential is the decision of where to position their transshipment and delivery facilities, as well as which of those facilities should serve each of the customers. The main motivation for conducting the study lies on the fact that typically freight operators locate their distribution centers outside the cities and deliver the products using trucks, traveling “door-to-door” to all the downtown destinations. This delivery approach causes many problems in urban areas, ranging from traffic congestion, increasing emissions, to higher delays. This project, considering the need for sustainability and cost-efficiency in city logistics, addresses this matter by developing a multi-objective novel mathematical framework for the capacitated facility location-allocation problem, an NP-Hard optimization problem, with the objectives of minimizing the costs for using the designated locations, the costs associated with the transportation of cargo to the allocated facilities and the distances between the chosen facilities and final destination nodes. The model selects the optimal number and locations of mini-hubs inside urban areas, where trucks will directly head from the main facility and unload the products. The products are further delivered by eco-friendly transportation means (e.g. handcarts, bicycles, self-picked up) to the final destinations, promoting sustainable delivery solutions and improving urban freight mobility.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Contract to a Performing Organization has not yet been awarded.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3551747120

• Sponsor Organizations:

  United States Department of Transportation - FHWA - LTAP

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC    20590

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Freight Mobility Research Institute

  Florida Atlantic University
  Boca Raton, FL  United States  33431
• Principal Investigators:

  Kaisar, Evangelos

• Start Date: 20190111
• Expected Completion Date: 20200111
• Actual Completion Date: 0

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Cargo handling; Cost effectiveness; Delivery service; Facilities; Freight transportation; Industrial location; Logistics; Mobility; Optimization; Sustainable transportation; Trucks; Urban areas
• Subject Areas: Environment; Freight Transportation; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Terminals and Facilities;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01682657
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Freight Mobility Research Institute
• Contract Numbers: 69A3551747120
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Oct 3 2018 5:00PM