Category «Research»

Research: foresight research methods for sustainable urban freight transport for smart cities

A new paper by Zhangyuan and Haasis (2020) in Sustainability aims to construct a theoretical research framework for sustainable urban freight transport (SUFT) from the perspectives of future urban development and distribution innovations and appropriate research methods are discussed, as well. Urban freight transport plays a critical role in the promotion of sustainable and livable cities.

UTCR about crowd shipping: who is willing to do it?

The rapid emergence of direct-to-home delivery models has quickly changed the spatial and temporal distribution of both individual travelers’ trips and of urban goods movements. A growing number of household and consumer products now being delivered directly to homes rather than being picked up in retail stores.

Last-mile logistics research: a systematic review of literature

Coincident with the rapid growth of omnichannel retailing, growing urbanization, changing consumer behavior, and increasing focus on sustainability, academic interest in the area of last mile logistics has significantly increased. The influx of research spans multiple disciplines and various methodologies, underlining the complexity and fragmentation of last-mile logistics research, which leads to a lack of …

Rotterdam (NL) students present results of LEFV-pilot

From September 2019 up to and including January 2020, students of Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences provided the last mile for HoReCa establishments in the inner city of Rotterdam and Schiedam under the name HR Cargo for logistics service provider Nedcargo. The results of a first pilot in 2018 led to an expansion of HR …

Exploring the future of city logistics via waterways

Smart, efficient and innovative solutions are needed to optimize urban transport. What distribution and infrastructure technologies have vast potential in providing integrated logistics solutions for the city of Amsterdam? What role could waterway networks play with regard to the transportation of people and goods?

Research: integrating first-mile pickup and last-mile delivery

In a recent paper, researchers analyze the route efficiency trade-offs that emerge from combining first-mile pickup and last-mile delivery operations in an urban distribution system. They build on the literature on continuum approximation of optimal route distances and propose adjustment factors that account for the effects of integrated pickup and delivery operations.