| 61. |
- Fried, Travis, et al.
(författare)
-
Evaluating spatial inequity in last-mile delivery: a national analysis
- 2024
-
Ingår i: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL DISTRIBUTION & LOGISTICS MANAGEMENT. - 0960-0035 .- 1758-664X. ; 54:5, s. 501-522
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- PurposeDespite large bodies of research related to the impacts of e-commerce on last-mile logistics and sustainability, there has been limited effort to evaluate urban freight using an equity lens. Therefore, this study proposes a modeling framework that enables researchers and planners to estimate the baseline equity performance of a major e-commerce platform and evaluate equity impacts of possible urban freight management strategies. The study also analyzes the sensitivity of various operational decisions to mitigate bias in the analysis.Design/methodology/approachThe model adapts empirical methodologies from activity-based modeling, transport equity evaluation, and residential freight trip generation (RFTG) to estimate person- and household-level delivery demand and cargo van traffic exposure in 41 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs).FindingsEvaluating 12 measurements across varying population segments and spatial units, the study finds robust evidence for racial and socio-economic inequities in last-mile delivery for low-income and, especially, populations of color (POC). By the most conservative measurement, POC are exposed to roughly 35% more cargo van traffic than white populations on average, despite ordering less than half as many packages. The study explores the model's utility by evaluating a simple scenario that finds marginal equity gains for urban freight management strategies that prioritize line-haul efficiency improvements over those improving intra-neighborhood circulations.Originality/valuePresents a first effort in building a modeling framework for more equitable decision-making in last-mile delivery operations and broader city planning.
|
|
| 62. |
- Fried, T., et al.
(författare)
-
Seeking equity and justice in urban freight: where to look?
- 2024
-
Ingår i: Transport Reviews. - 0144-1647 .- 1464-5327. ; 44:1, s. 191-212
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Urban freight systems embed and reflect spatial inequities in cities and imbalanced power structures within transport decision-making. These concerns are principal domains of "transportation justice" (TJ) and "mobility justice" (MJ) scholarship that have emerged in the past decade. However, little research exists situating urban freight within these prevailing frameworks, which leaves urban freight research on socio-environmental equity and justice ill-defined, especially compared to passenger or personal mobility discussions. Through the lens that derives from TJ and MJ's critical dialogue, this study synthesises urban freight literature's engagement with equity and justice. Namely, the review evaluates: How do researchers identify equitable distributions of urban freight's costs and benefits? At what scale do researchers evaluate urban freight inequities? And who does research consider entitled to urban freight equity and how are they involved in urban freight governance? The findings help inform researchers who seek to reimagine urban freight management strategies within broader equity and justice discourse.
|
|
| 63. |
|
|
| 64. |
- Grossmann, Igor, et al.
(författare)
-
Insights into the accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Nature Human Behaviour. - : Springer Nature. - 2397-3374. ; 7, s. 484-501
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- How well can social scientists predict societal change, and what processes underlie their predictions? To answer these questions, we ran two forecasting tournaments testing the accuracy of predictions of societal change in domains commonly studied in the social sciences: ideological preferences, political polarization, life satisfaction, sentiment on social media, and gender-career and racial bias. After we provided them with historical trend data on the relevant domain, social scientists submitted pre-registered monthly forecasts for a year (Tournament 1; N = 86 teams and 359 forecasts), with an opportunity to update forecasts on the basis of new data six months later (Tournament 2; N = 120 teams and 546 forecasts). Benchmarking forecasting accuracy revealed that social scientists' forecasts were on average no more accurate than those of simple statistical models (historical means, random walks or linear regressions) or the aggregate forecasts of a sample from the general public (N = 802). However, scientists were more accurate if they had scientific expertise in a prediction domain, were interdisciplinary, used simpler models and based predictions on prior data. How accurate are social scientists in predicting societal change, and what processes underlie their predictions? Grossmann et al. report the findings of two forecasting tournaments. Social scientists' forecasts were on average no more accurate than those of simple statistical models.
|
|
| 65. |
- Hanson, Robin, 1981, et al.
(författare)
-
Challenges and requirements in the introduction of automated loading and unloading
- 2022
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Research question The use of autonomous vehicles for road transport holds a potential to improve transport performance within areas such as safety, sustainability, driver shortage, and cost efficiency, and there is an increasing interest in the area (Sindi and Woodman, 2021). However, to fully realise the potential of autonomous transport, it seems that the interfaces with shipping and receiving facilities, in terms of loading and unloading, should be automated too, as argued below.In traditional setups, the truck driver is often responsible for loading and unloading the truck, as well as for securing the load. Hence, if there is no truck driver, a different solution is required. A straightforward solution would be for the personnel in the facilities to perform the loading and unloading. Increasingly, however, automation is applied also in production (Bortolini et al. 2021) and warehousing (Custodio and Machado 2020), and it is therefore not obvious that there will be personnel available at the pickup or delivery locations either. Moreover, it is not uncommon that facilities are manned only during daytime. Automated loading and unloading operations could make it possible to decouple the truck transports from the operations in the facilities, thereby enabling round the clock deliveries, regardless of the manning of the facilities. This could reduce congestion on the road. The application of automation often holds a potential to reduce operational cost, as the cost of man-hours may be reduced, which has been indicated in research on internal transport (Bechtsis et al. 2017), as well as the broader area of materials handling. There are several potential challenges that need to be overcome, and several requirements that need to be fulfilled, to enable automated loading and unloading between the autonomous transport and the shipping and receiving facilities. The loading and unloading processes can be considered to take place in the interface between different systems, linking the shipping facilities with the external transport, and linking the external transport with the receiving facilities. In addition to moving the goods onto and off the truck, there are further activities that need to be undertaken, which are performed manually in most systems today. This includes for example opening and closing the hatch of the truck and, importantly, securing the load on the truck after loading it. Applying a systems approach, this paper addresses the question: which are the challenges and requirements of automated loading and unloading in a setting of autonomous freight road transport? Brief overview of the state of the art, including relevant references Significant research in past focused on simulating and automating loading and unloading operations on transportation system with truck driver (Shen et al. 2019; Cao and Dou 2021). They are primarily focused on planning of loading and unloading system and defining the working principles of systemsmodules compatible with multiple material, For instance, Xu et al. (2021). Stacking of standard pallets on truck with fully automated forklifts (Cao and Dou 2021), design and development of automatic cargo batch system for loading and unloading operations (Lee et al. 2014), design and development of automated guided vehicle for material handing in production (Thylén 2022) and application of digital twin technology in design and develop of an intelligent control system for automatic loading and unloading (Zhu, Xu, and Zhu 2021). Nevertheless, when it comes to unmanned fully autonomous transportation, studies on designing and realizing interfaces with shipping and receiving facilities, are limited and at nascent stage. Working towards addressing this research gap, this study identified challenges and requirements of automated loading and unloading in a setting of autonomous truck freight road transport. Method The paper is based on a case study at a production site where autonomous truck transport is currently applied in a pilot setup. In the pilot setup, goods are delivered by an autonomous truck from a production plant to a nearby warehouse, located a few hundred metres from the plant, although travelling partly on a public road. Connected to the pilot setup, preparations are also made for applying automated loading and unloading of the autonomous truck. The study is led by researchers from two universities and is conducted in cooperation with representatives from several companies. All the companies are participating in the preparations for automated loading and unloading at the production site: themanufacturing company operating the production plant and the warehouse, the company providing the autonomous truck, a company providing equipment for automated materials handling, and a company specializing in solutions for load securing. Data is collected through site visits and mapping of processes and material flows, as well as through interviews with the companies involved in the pilot setup and in the preparations for automated loading and unloading. Analysis and results The results from the first stage of the project have been used to prepare a base case with a conventional truck and driver used to move pallets between the production plant and the warehouse. A second case uses an autonomous truck to transport the pallets from the production plant to the warehouse. For the base case the truck is loaded by the driver using a forklift truck (FLT) and the driver secures the load. Unloading at the warehouse is done by FLT operated by someone working in receiving area. For the second case (autonomous truck) the vehicle is loaded by FLT operated by someone from the production plant. Unloading is the responsibility of the warehouse receiving the pallets and is therefore the same as the base case operation.Mapping the material flows and the steps involved has shown that the driver plays various roles beyond driving the truck between the plant and the warehouse. These roles include: opening the door/gate at the loading bay, loading the truck with pallets, securing the load, deciding when the truck is full and needs to leave the plant to go to the warehouse and informing the staff at the warehouse that the truck has arrived. After unloading the driver will determine whether the truck should go back to the production plant for another load or should be used for another activity at the production location. When the autonomous truck is used then the ancillary actions carried out by the driver (listed above) have to be done by someone else or a change has to be made to the processes – for example a sensor could indicate the arrival at the warehouse of the loaded truck. Mapping the processes has demonstrated the scale of the challenge in automating these activities and the requirements applying to an automated loading and unloading system. These include the dynamic environment of the loading/unloading area, non-uniformity of goods, scanning of goods (identification tag, ensuring even weight distribution and alignment of pallets, securing of the load). The accountability and responsibilities of different stakeholders in fully automated unmanned system and handling of claims must also be addressed in the change to more automated systems.
|
|
| 66. |
|
|
| 67. |
- Holguin-Veras, José, et al.
(författare)
-
Importance and Potential Applications of Freight and Service Activity Models
- 2018
-
Ingår i: City Logistics 1: New Opportunities and Challenges / edited by Eiichi Taniguchi, Russell G. Thompson.. - London & New York : Wiley-ISTE. - 9781786302052 ; , s. 45-63
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter aims to raise awareness about the importance of the specific consideration of the needs of Freight and Service Activity (FSA) in transportation planning and management efforts. It also aims to exemplify the potential application of establishment‐level FSA models to support these efforts. FSA encompasses a wide range of activities performed at commercial establishments. The freight side of FSA represents the pick‐up and delivery activity associated with the production and consumption of supplies. The chapter provides a summary of key features of urban economies and their relation to FSA. It briefly describes the data and approach used to estimate FSA models. The chapter summarizes the chief findings of the research. FSA models have multiple practical applications. This is possible because the establishment‐level nature of these models allows them to be used at various levels of geography, ranging from the state/metropolitan level to local analyses at the building level.
|
|
| 68. |
|
|
| 69. |
- Holguín-Veras, J, et al.
(författare)
-
Public Sector Freight Interventions in Metropolitan Areas II: Pricing, Logistics, and Demand Management
- 2014
-
Ingår i: Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting, January 12-16 2014. Washington, D.C.. ; :14-0837
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The second in a series of two, this paper presents the results from a comprehensive survey of the various interventions that the public sector could employ to increase the net social benefits of freight activity in metropolitan areas. In this paper, the strategies concerning: pricing, incentives, and taxation; logistical management; and freight demand/land use management are discussed along with an outline for identification of potential interventions that could be of use to address a given freight issue.
|
|
| 70. |
- Holguín-Veras, José, et al.
(författare)
-
State of the art and practice of urban freight management: Part I: Infrastructure, vehicle-related, and traffic operations
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice. - : Elsevier BV. - 0965-8564. ; 137, s. 360-382
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- © 2018 Elsevier Ltd The first in a series of two, this paper conducts a review of the public-sector initiatives that could be used to improve freight activity in metropolitan areas; collects data about initiatives that have been implemented and their performance; and produces a ranking of suggested initiatives. The review of public-sector initiatives is based on a comprehensive analysis of their performance, which cataloged the initiatives into seven major groups, 15 subgroups, and 48 unique initiatives. The initiatives covered in this paper include: Infrastructure Management; Parking/Loading Areas Management; Vehicle-Related Strategies; and Traffic Management. The characterization of the state of the practice and the performance of the initiatives was based on a survey that collected data from 32 countries and 56 cities throughout the world. The third component of the work is a ranking of suggested initiatives based on the performance data collected by the survey. The paper ends with a discussion of chief findings.
|
|
