J.H.R. van Duin

GenCLOn: An ontology for city logistics

City logistics is a discipline specialized to cope with the sustainability problems encountered in urban freight transport. A key characteristic of it is the heterogeneity of the stakeholders involved. Besides the traditional logistics actors such as shippers, carriers and receivers that share consistent interests (i.e. price and quality), city logistics highly respect the interests of public administrators and citizens that care more about the social welfare. To reach an optimal balance between private and public benefit, it is necessary to understand and in turn forecast the behavior pattern of different groups. In recent years, agent-based modeling has been practiced as an unconventional tool to fulfill this task for its strong capability on capturing the dynamic behavior of individual stakeholders and their interconnections. Referring to other domains (e.g. energy system) where the application of agent-based modeling is relatively mature, a following urgency is to achieve interoperability and in turn reusability between models via introducing formal ontology as a shared template with which developers can standardize their models. This paper introduces an initiative of developing an ontology that formalizes the domain knowledge of city logistics.

Automatic pattern detection in stakeholder networks

The values and opinions of the stakeholders involved in a decision-making process are the key to its outcome. Reflection on how stakeholders perceive a situation, and on the consequences of these perceptions for the decision outcome is an intellectually demanding exercise. To support analysis, we have developed a conceptual modeling tool called DANA (Dynamic Actor Network Analysis). The modeling language is based on the policy network paradigm and embodies concepts from cognitive mapping and linguistic approaches to approximate reasoning. In this paper, we investigate how certain interesting properties of stakeholder networks modeled with DANA can be determined algorithmically. Automatic detection of the factors most relevant to a policy situation, and of disagreement and conflict among stakeholders may help the analyst in focusing her analysis.

City Logistics: A Chaos between Research and Policy Making? A Review

Although the interest in urban freight transport is growing, it is commonly seen as an area where there is, for several reasons, a lack of research, especially if it is compared with the amount of research that deals with passenger transport. The attention of governments especially for urban goods movement has increased over recent years and with that the number of studies in the urban goods movement field. However, the practice of city logistics policies is not very often the result of detailed analyses and evaluations. This is reflected in similar types of regulations repeated through the different cities regardless of their characteristics, the same schedules for time windows and load zones, and the failure to recognize different types of urban distribution which require different types of regulations. Apart from copying regulation frameworks, however, cities hardly share information, knowledge or cooperation. The lack of national or regional bodies dealing with city logistics, as there exist for urban passenger traffic, is significant. In this paper the authors address the main research contributions in city logistics and try to illustrate how the research contributions are (not) related to the daily practice of policymaking and town planning. Finally the paper ends with the conclusion that a real gap exists between research and practice and the paper provides some explanations, conditions and directions for setting up new research projects.

City logistics through the canals? A simulation study on freight waterborne transport in the inner-city of Amsterdam

This study investigates whether distributing goods across the water to the city of Amsterdam can be a potential future solution considering the busy traffic of the pleasure crafts and touring boats on the canals. A simulation model was developed to analyse the logistics performances and traffic influences for different fleet size configurations. The simulation tests have shown that four vessels are needed to guarantee the requested delivery times, a sufficient loading rate (82%) was generated for each ship, and no significant delays will happen due to interaction with other water traffic. Conclusion of this study is that a waterborne city logistics concept through the canals of Amsterdam has demonstrated the capability to reduce congestion in the inner-city and is able to satisfy the delivery requirements of the shopkeepers without significant interference with other waterborne traffic.

Time Constraints: The Cost of Sustainability

Time constraints imposed on the accessibility of delivery vehicles to the inner city centre are a commonplace policy in European cities, linked to sustainable mobility strategies and seeking to reduce congestion, parking problems and pollution in the most sensible area of the city. However, these time constraints also impose an extra cost on carriers, who are often forced to modify their routes or use more vehicles, thus reducing the efficiency of the system. We present and apply a VRP-based methodology to estimate these costs, which should be brought into the overall cost-benefit analysis of urban time constraint policies.

Towards governance on noise between municipality and terminal operator by the use of simulation modelling

Abstract The development of multimodal transport terminals in urban areas generates various serious environmental problems. The available tools for the analyses of the use of such terminals offer insufficient support for decision-making on the location and design of these terminals from the sustainability perspective. New approaches are needed. This article contributes to satisfy this need, triggered by the planning of a new Barge Terminal in the Dutch city of Tilburg (BTT). Presently, the existing terminal in Tilburg is operating near full capacity and the construction of a new terminal is considered the best strategy to cope with steady growth. The main question concerns the optimal design of the new barge terminal to offer a high operational performance, however without exceeding the environmental quality standards, in particular noise. The article presents a simulation approach to assist in the process of finding a balance between the operational performance and the noise effects of alternative designs of the new terminal.

SIMULATION OF UNDERGROUND FREIGHT TRANSPORT SYSTEMS

Underground logistics distribution systems seem to be a sustainable solution for environmental, congestion and space problems. In Holland many underground projects spring up like mushrooms, starting a definition phase to test the feasibility of the first underground designs. In order to gain a structured insight into the logistic dependencies, this paper defines three modelling levels of control: at vehicle level (micro), in order to control the traffic movements of the vehicles at handling areas and tubes; at transport order level (meso), in order to control the transport orders, the assignment of shipments and vehicles, and the empty vehicle stock management; and at interconnection level (macro), in order to achieve good connectivity with the schedules of the external transportation modalities.

URBAN FREIGHT TRANSPORT: LEARNING FROM THE PRACTICES IN TWO COUNTRIES

Holland and Japan, like other countries, are confronted with a growing need for freight transportation. Although multimodal transportation modes will gain more market share in the future, the scenarios for the next decades still predict a continuous growth of truck transportation. Therefore, reducing congestion problems and their negative environmental impacts seems to be an important goal for the local governments of both countries. Next to these reductions, improving the quality of the living environment is also a common goal for the governments in the field of urban transportation logistics. Various policy measures are taken by the local authorities to satisfy some of these goals. Confronted with the differences in policy measures in the two countries, the research orientations have a different scope. Both modelling and implementation are different, but the integration of both leads to new promising ideas. The results of the research joint venture between Kyoto University and the Technical University of Delft are discussed in the paper.

How sustainable is research on sustainable mobility: a review of five years of "Urban Transport"

This paper explains how that policy makers, in the past few years, have paid more attention to the development of sustainability mobility. One of the main reasons for this change of thinking is due the deterioration of the environmental conditions in urban areas. However, it is though that the research also plays an important part. Therefore, with respect to this topic an inventory was made concerning the past five years of the Urban Transport conferences. Using a systems view on transportation, all research contributions related to the topic of sustainable mobility were classified. A distinction is made between people and freight. Longitudinal research can make it more clear as to whether the attentions or differences concerning this topic have changes in relation to the systems view. The paper identifies whether some research efforts have (not) been successfully implemented in practice.

NO TIME TO WASTE, IT IS TIME TO WASTE: A FEASIBILITY STUDY ON UNDERGROUND WASTE COLLECTION

Time or no time to waste has become a central research question for the next few years. Traditionally, manufacturers did not feel responsible for their products after consumer use. The bulk of used products was dumped or incinerated with considerable damage to the environment. Nowadays waste management receives increasing attention. Due to new waste management legislation, the emphasis has shifted to recovery, due to the high cost and environmental burdens of disposal. Recently, at regional level, municipalities have become more aware of the fact that waste collection is one of the key elements in the reverse logistics chain. This paper discusses a feasibility study carried out on underground waste collection in the Netherlands.