TCDU

In a big city like Paris or Shanghai, the daily flows of urban freight distribution are huge, especially in today’s e-commerce era. These goods flows together with the flows of private cars lead to traffic congestion, air pollution and enormous consumption of fossil energy. Optimizing logistics operations in an urban area is thus primordial for reducing air pollution and energy consumption, improving living conditions and assuring the sustainable development of a city. Collaborative transportation has recently emerged as a very effective approach to further consolidate logistics flows beyond logistics platforms in a city. In this approach, several shippers or carriers collaborate with each other by pooling and sharing their transportation requests or by sharing their transportation means in order to reduce the repositions of empty vehicles and increase the fill rates of vehicles. By applying operations research, combinatorial auction and cooperative game theories, this project aims to develop models and optimization methods for collaborative transportation planning among shippers and carriers in the urban distribution. One novelty of the project is the study of the synergy between the consolidation of logistics flows through urban distribution centers and the consolidation of flows through the collaboration among shippers and carriers. Based on these models and methods, a prototype of web-based platform and a prototype of decision support tool will be developed to facilitate collaboration among shippers and carriers in a dynamic collaboration network. The results of the project can help these actors to reduce their logistics costs and contribute to the sustainable development of a city.