Abstract Summary
City logistics as a massively overlooked component in the increasingly messy urban environment. However, empirical research and planning tools are very little available to facilitate more sustainable city logistics policy making. This is increasingly problematic due to the rapid growth of ‘micro freight’ and the fragmentation of urban deliveries. Solutions for more cleaner delivery vehicles, or consolidation services are increasingly complex to design and implement. Therefore, we present MASS-GT a new agent based simulation model for urban freight planning. The MASS-GT simulation model adopts an agent-, commodity and tour based approach. The simulation model simulates all relevant segments of urban freight transport: conventional freight deliveries, micro freight and service trips. The approach is data-based, using extensive freight transport dataset for The Netherlands for the calibration and validation of the model. It was developed in a step-wise evolution following the minimum viable product principle. The research has provided an effective simulation approach with detailed logistic decision making in long term strategic decisions (supplier choice, shipment size, distribution channel), daily decisions (scheduling) and route choice. It also simulates key performance indicators such as demand statistics, transport performance, logistic efficiency and emissions. The modelling approach applies an efficient combination of conventional techniques such as simulation, discrete choice and optimization methods. The models are calibrated and validated using a variety of available data on truck trip diaries, input/output statistics, e-commerce demand survey, traffic counts and other relevant statistics. A number of case study explore a variety of relevant planning issues in urban freight transport: zero-emission zones, micro hub scenarios, logistic facility planning or crowdshipping. The city logistic use cases were developed in collaboration with local authorities. In the project HARMONY there was a strong involvement of the city of Rotterdam to support the analysis on the impacts of the introduction of a zero-emission zone for city logistics. In the project LEAD, the city of The Hague and local start-ups (bicycle carrier and a pick-up point provider) collaborated in a living lab of crowdshipping solutions. In our contribution we will present the simulation use cases and stimulate the discussion on this emerging field. These examples will show how simulation can support the design of a sustainable and viable network of urban consolidation centers. We want to discuss how the application of simulation models should be standard practice for city logistic planning.
