An agent-based simulation framework for the study of urban delivery

Abstract

Abstract In recent years, cities and especially urban mobility have undergone remarkable changes. Significant advances in technology have been translated into new mobility services for both goods and people. One evident change has been the transformation of traditional vehicle fleets into more open fleets, in the sense that their members can proactively decide whether or not they are part of a certain fleet and whether or not they perform certain services. Fleets of this type make the decision-making process to be highly distributed, and rule out some of the typically centralized decisions. The management and control of this type of open fleets is severely more complex and, for this reason, the availability of simulation tools that allow for their analysis can be very useful. In accordance with this, the main contribution of this work is the development of an agent-based simulation tool specifically designed for the simulation of new urban mobility models. In this way, the tool can simulate any type of fleet in different urban scenarios, including a solution of the Last Mile Delivery problem, which is also included as a proof of concept in this paper.