City logistics, urban goods distribution and last mile delivery and collection

Supply chains, logistics and freight have been facing increasingly complex challenges posed by transitions in economic structures, urbanization, city design and transport systems, as well as by the externalities associated with logistics activities in urban areas. This has driven a great deal of research recently. Yet, there are no sufficient contributions clarifying the current state of thought in this field. This article critically reviews the literature highlighting current approaches in the field. The objective of the article is threefold. First, to provide a framework with geographical and functional elements of urban logistics. Second, to identify the scope of the literature, vested into a typology. And third, to define the terms that may embrace the various analytical interests of the urban logistics field, namely city logistics, urban goods distribution and last mile logistics. The aim is to contribute to organize the current and future thought in the field of urban logistics.

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Multimodal Automated Last-Mile Delivery System: Design and Application

10.32920/ryerson.14660943 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Farah Samouh

Keyword(s):

Delivery System ◽

Hybrid System ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Food Delivery ◽

Efficient System ◽

Fleet Size ◽

Agent Based ◽

Last Mile ◽

Last Mile Delivery ◽

Two Hybrid

This thesis focuses on exploring the emerging automated technologies for last-mile on-demand food delivery as a new means of transportation to reduce congestion in urban areas. In order to achieve that 4 systems are designed and evaluated: Robot delivery system, drone delivery system and two hybrid delivery systems. Both hybrid systems are based on hub-spoke networks, Hybrid System 1.0 uses robots for phase one of the delivery and drones for phase two Hybrid System 2.0 uses drones for phase one and robots for phase two. To evaluate the efficiency of these systems, an in-house agent-based simulation model in MATLAB is developed for the City of Mississauga. 30 scenarios are tested differing in terms of demand and fleet size. The results show that Hybrid system 2.0 is the most efficient system of all four proposed due to the use of hub, customer waiting time and landing zones for drones.

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"Agent-based simulation of restaurant deliveries facilitating cargo-bikes and urban consolidation"

Proceedings of the Int. Conf. on Harbor Maritime and Multimodal Logistics M&S ◽

10.46354/i3m.2018.hms.002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Christian Fikar ◽

Manfred Gronalt

Keyword(s):

Urban Areas ◽

Optimization Procedure ◽

Simulation Models ◽

Food Delivery ◽

Agent Based ◽

Last Mile ◽

Last Mile Delivery ◽

Cargo Bike ◽

The Impact ◽

Urban Consolidation

"Last-mile distribution in urban areas is challenged by congestion and restriction for motorized traffic. To support operations, this work investigate the impact of operating urban consolidation points and facilitating cargo-bikes for urban last-mile distribution. Motivated by sample setting originating from the food delivery industry, a decision support system combining agentbased simulation with heuristic optimization procedure is developed. It considers a logistics provider who performs the last-mile delivery for multiple competing restaurants in an urban area. Therefore, both demand and the availability of cargo-bikes, which are operated by freelancers, are subject to randomness. Computational experiments investigate the impact of the available amount of cargo-bike drivers as well as the number of operated consolidation points, highlighting the importance of facilitating simulation models to support operations in highly dynamic and uncertain settings."

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Simulation–optimisation framework for City Logistics: an application on multimodal last-mile delivery

IET Intelligent Transport Systems ◽

10.1049/iet-its.2017.0357 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

pp. 262-269 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

Guido Perboli ◽

Mariangela Rosano ◽

Michael Saint-Guillain ◽

Pietro Rizzo

Keyword(s):

City Logistics ◽

Last Mile ◽

Simulation Optimisation ◽

Last Mile Delivery

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Collaborative last-mile delivery and pick-up in city logistics

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management ◽

10.1504/ijlsm.2019.103518 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 34 (4) ◽

pp. 533

Author(s):

Aishwary Bhasker ◽

S.P. Sarmah ◽

Taebok Kim

Keyword(s):

City Logistics ◽

Last Mile ◽

Last Mile Delivery

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Slovenia on the Way to Drone Delivery - What More Needs to be Done

10.18690/978-961-286-538-2.4 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Kristijan Perčič ◽

Branka Leskovšek

Keyword(s):

Urban Areas ◽

Business Environment ◽

Internal Market ◽

City Logistics ◽

National Legislation ◽

Promising Technology ◽

Last Mile ◽

Operational Models ◽

Cost Efficient ◽

The Way

Nowadays, it is impossible to bypass the fact that digitization, robotics and automation of work are becoming an increasingly important part of our living and business. It becomes crucial, especially in urban areas, to identify new operational models that could be applied for last mile deliveries, where increasing of city logistics sustainability is being the main goal. Drones have been widely acknowledged as a promising technology in many fields and industries, especially for the delivery of medical and aid packages in humanitarian and healthcare logistics. In this study, we present the project of Post of Slovenia, which aimed to implement first delivery drone to the fleet to access hard-to-access locations. Slovenian Post aims to create innovative, cost-efficient and market-led business environment for the development and take-up of new drone services and technologies within the Slovenian’s internal market. As the national legislation in this area is still relatively unregulated, Post of Slovenia has actively contacted with the national authorities, which are the drafters of the relevant legislation, in order to accelerate the introduction of delivery drones into Slovenian airspace.

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The Scope for Pavement Porters: Addressing the Challenges of Last-Mile Parcel Delivery in London

Transportation Research Record Journal of the Transportation Research Board ◽

10.1177/0361198118794535 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 2672 (9) ◽

pp. 184-193 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Julian Allen ◽

Tolga Bektas ◽

Tom Cherrett ◽

Oliver Bates ◽

Adrian Friday ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Urban Areas ◽

Urban Centers ◽

Delivery Problem ◽

Last Mile ◽

Road Space ◽

Total Vehicle ◽

Vehicle Activity ◽

The Uk ◽

Last Mile Delivery ◽

Alternative Solutions

The UK parcel sector generated almost £9 billion in revenue in 2015, with growth expected to increase by 15.6% to 2019 and is characterized by many independent players competing in an “everyone-delivers-everywhere” culture leading to much replication of vehicle activity. With road space in urban centers being increasingly reallocated to pavement widening, and bus and cycle lanes, there is growing interest in alternative solutions to the last-mile delivery problem. We make three contributions in this paper: firstly, through empirical analysis using carrier operational datasets, we quantify the characteristics of last-mile parcel operations and demonstrate the reliance placed on walking by vehicle drivers with their vans being parked at the curbside for on average 60% of the total vehicle round time; secondly, we introduce the concept of “portering” where vans rendezvous with porters who operate within specific geographical “patches” to service consignees on foot, potentially saving 86% in driving distance on some rounds and 69% in time; finally, we highlight the wider practical issues and optimization challenges associated with operating driving and portering rounds in inner urban areas.

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Picture fuzzy WASPAS method for selecting last-mile delivery mode: a case study of Belgrade

European Transport Research Review ◽

10.1186/s12544-021-00501-6 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Vladimir Simić ◽

Dragan Lazarević ◽

Momčilo Dobrodolac

Keyword(s):

Urban Areas ◽

High Reliability ◽

Real Life ◽

Delivery Mode ◽

Uncertain Information ◽

Logistics Industry ◽

Last Mile ◽

Picture Fuzzy Set ◽

Last Mile Delivery

Abstract Background Last-mile delivery (LMD) is becoming more and more demanding due to an increasing number of users and traffic problems in cities. Besides, medical crises (like the COVID-19 outbreak) and air pollution represent additional motives for the transition from traditional to socially and environmentally sustainable LMD mode. An emerging problem for companies in the postal and logistics industry is how to determine the best LMD mode in a multi-criteria setting under uncertainty. Method For the first time, an extension of the Weighted Aggregated Sum Product ASsessment (WASPAS) method under the picture fuzzy environment is presented to solve the LMD mode selection problem. The introduced picture fuzzy set (PFS) based multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method can be highly beneficial to managers who are in charge of LMD since it can take into account the neutral/refusal information and efficiently deal with high levels of imprecise, vague, and uncertain information. The comparative analysis with the existing state-of-the-art PFS-based MCDM methods approved the high reliability of the proposed picture fuzzy WASPAS method. Its high robustness and consistency are also confirmed. The presented method can be used to improve LMD in urban areas worldwide. Besides, it can be applied to solve other emerging MCDM problems in an uncertain environment. Findings A real-life case study of Belgrade is presented to fully illustrate the potentials and applicability of the picture fuzzy WASPAS method. The results show that postomates are the best mode for LMD in Belgrade, followed by cargo bicycles, drones, traditional delivery, autonomous vehicles, and tube transport.

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Matching Model for Multiple Delivery Methods in Last-Mile Delivery for Online Shopping

Transportation Research Record Journal of the Transportation Research Board ◽

10.1177/03611981211036361 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 036119812110363

Author(s):

Jianhui Du ◽

Xu Wang

Keyword(s):

Urban Areas ◽

Online Shopping ◽

Evaluation Criteria ◽

Real Life ◽

Matching Model ◽

Delivery Methods ◽

Analytic Hierarchy ◽

Last Mile ◽

Delivery Services ◽

Last Mile Delivery

Against the background of e-commerce, online shopping has seen considerable growth in China, as in the rest of the world. The last mile of delivery services for online shopping is a logistics challenge that affects service performance. This study has two main aims: first, to construct an evaluation criteria system for last-mile delivery service; and second to propose a matching model, capable of ranking six delivery methods according to customer preferences in the different urban areas. The factors base is established from the literature and from questionnaires and interviews with experts. Moreover, by conducting a questionnaire with consumers and analyzing the data, this research identifies the top 15 factors. The matching model based on the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is constructed to compute the weight of each factor. The collection of data on customer preference was performed in distinct urban areas. Finally, to illustrate the validity of the criteria factors and the matching model, it was applied to three districts in Chongqing in China. Finally, our theoretical results from the experiments in real-life instances show that the criteria system and the matching model could help express companies to identify appropriate delivery methods in specific areas.

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