Publicação
Models and methods to support decision making in urban logistics context
| Resumo: | Nowadays, there is an expanding global population living in central and metropolitan areas of cities, as well as an increase in e-commerce sales. This emphasizes the need to implement solutions that improve the Urban Logistics effectiveness in delivering freight into metropolitan areas. In this context, the integration of passenger and freight movements inside cities has received extensive attention in recent years given the potential benefits to inhabitants' quality of life, such as reduced air pollution, noise, and congestion. However, further research is needed to better understand the city stakeholders' expectations and perceptions about the adoption of these types of solutions, as well as how to develop and model these integrated solutions in an effective manner. This research, developed within the scope of the SOLFI (Sistema de Optimização para a Logística Urbana com Fluxos Integrados de mercadorias e passageiros) project, addresses an urban logistics solution combining freight and passenger flows. This integrated solution is intended to leverage the city of Porto's bus network to transport freight packages into the city center, making use of the passenger journeys that already occur in the city. The contributions of this research are spelt out in three main parts. First, a systematic and comprehensive evaluation of the current operational research models and methods investigating urban logistics, integrating freight and passenger flows, was done. This allowed to understand how other researchers have addressed the subject, as well as highlight existing literature gaps and describe the research directions of this work. Second, a questionnaire and three semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather the key stakeholders’ requirements and expectations for the integrated logistical solution. The results from the application of these instruments allowed to design the integrated logistical solution and obtain a conceptual model for the solution, based on Unified Modeling Language (UML). Lastly, exact optimization models and heuristics algorithms were developed and applied to two relevant problems, within the topic under research, to support the decision- making process: The Freight Network Flow Assignment Problem (FNFAP) to study the assignment of freight along the distribution network, supporting the operational planning, and the Bus Network Planning Problem (BNPP) to study the bus fleet size required, supporting the strategic planning. Computational experiments were conducted for both problems, using IBM CPLEX for the exact optimization models and MATLAB for the heuristic approaches, using sets of generated instances. This thesis makes several contributions to theory and practice, in particular the proposal for a new urban logistics service that seeks to incorporate sustainability, with the voice of the main stakeholders. Furthermore, the models and methods developed for two relevant associated problems showed that competitive solutions in short computation times can be obtained, efficiently supporting the decision-making process in this integrated logistical solution in the city of Porto. |
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| Autores principais: | Machado, Bruno Miguel da Cruz |
| Assunto: | Urban logistics City logistics Logistic optimization models an methods Heuristics Decision making support Strategic and operational planning |
| Ano: | 2024 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | tese de doutoramento |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade de Aveiro |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | RIA - Repositório Institucional da Universidade de Aveiro |
| Resumo: | Nowadays, there is an expanding global population living in central and metropolitan areas of cities, as well as an increase in e-commerce sales. This emphasizes the need to implement solutions that improve the Urban Logistics effectiveness in delivering freight into metropolitan areas. In this context, the integration of passenger and freight movements inside cities has received extensive attention in recent years given the potential benefits to inhabitants' quality of life, such as reduced air pollution, noise, and congestion. However, further research is needed to better understand the city stakeholders' expectations and perceptions about the adoption of these types of solutions, as well as how to develop and model these integrated solutions in an effective manner. This research, developed within the scope of the SOLFI (Sistema de Optimização para a Logística Urbana com Fluxos Integrados de mercadorias e passageiros) project, addresses an urban logistics solution combining freight and passenger flows. This integrated solution is intended to leverage the city of Porto's bus network to transport freight packages into the city center, making use of the passenger journeys that already occur in the city. The contributions of this research are spelt out in three main parts. First, a systematic and comprehensive evaluation of the current operational research models and methods investigating urban logistics, integrating freight and passenger flows, was done. This allowed to understand how other researchers have addressed the subject, as well as highlight existing literature gaps and describe the research directions of this work. Second, a questionnaire and three semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather the key stakeholders’ requirements and expectations for the integrated logistical solution. The results from the application of these instruments allowed to design the integrated logistical solution and obtain a conceptual model for the solution, based on Unified Modeling Language (UML). Lastly, exact optimization models and heuristics algorithms were developed and applied to two relevant problems, within the topic under research, to support the decision- making process: The Freight Network Flow Assignment Problem (FNFAP) to study the assignment of freight along the distribution network, supporting the operational planning, and the Bus Network Planning Problem (BNPP) to study the bus fleet size required, supporting the strategic planning. Computational experiments were conducted for both problems, using IBM CPLEX for the exact optimization models and MATLAB for the heuristic approaches, using sets of generated instances. This thesis makes several contributions to theory and practice, in particular the proposal for a new urban logistics service that seeks to incorporate sustainability, with the voice of the main stakeholders. Furthermore, the models and methods developed for two relevant associated problems showed that competitive solutions in short computation times can be obtained, efficiently supporting the decision-making process in this integrated logistical solution in the city of Porto. |
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