Efficiency of city logistics activities suffers due to conflicting personal preferences and distributed decision making by multiple city logistics stakeholders. This is exacerbated by interdependency of city logistics activities, decision making with limited information and stakeholders’ preference for personal objectives over system efficiency. Accordingly, the key to understanding the causes of inefficiency in the city logistics domain is understanding the interaction between heterogeneous stakeholders of the system. With the capabilities of representing a system in a natural and flexible way, agent based modelling (ABM) is a promising alternative for the city logistics domain. This research focuses on developing a framework for the successful implementation of the ABM approach for the city logistics domain. The framework includes various elements – a multi-perspective semantic data model (i.e. ontology) and its validation, the development of an agent base model using this ontology, and a validation approach for the agent-based model. Conclusively, the framework shows that a rigorous course can be taken to successfully implement agent based modelling approach for the city logistics domain.
This paper presents a review of city logistics (also known as urban freight transportation) modelling efforts reported in the literature for urban freight analysis. The review is based on an extensive search of the academic literature. We position the contributions in a framework that takes into account the diversity and complexity found in the present-day city logistics practice. The framework covers the fundamental aspects in the modelling selection process, including: (1) the stakeholders involved in the model, (2) the defining criteria, that is the descriptor for modelling purpose, (3) the objective of the model and (4) the solution approach implemented for achieving the objective. In our discussion and overview, we take these situational factors as the starting point for categorizing and evaluating the city logistics modelling literature. The review analyses the trends of city logistics modelling research in terms of its relevance to city logistics problems and attempts to identify missing links in modelling the urban freight domain.
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With the approach of the zero emission zone implementation in 30-40 cities mandated by the Dutch Klimaatakkord, comes the need to determine whether the SMEs located within these zones are aware of the coming changes and if they are, how far they have come in their preparation. This paper delves into the development of the zero emission city logistics maturity model tool which is used to indicate the progress of these small to medium enterprises in light of reaching fully zero emission city logistics operations. The paper starts off with a review of existing maturity models which forms the baseline for the zero emission city logistics maturity model in rubric form. A QuickScan analysis is developed in order to facilitate data collection by students who then approach businesses and use the QuickScan results to benchmark the businesses progress against other businesses. This paper then concludes with the preliminary results from the initial QuickScans performed by HBO level students.
