Towards Sustainable Transport: A Strategic Decision Support System for Urban Logistics Operations

Global urbanization for decades has led to unprecedented levels and growing demands for urban logistics. Thus, problems such as congestion, environmental noise, and urban sprawl are growing. As a result, many cities face problems of optimal decision-making regarding green and sustainable smart transportation systems and infrastructures. However, various possible measures and logistics concepts are available to improve urban logistics, while effects are unclear and difficult to predict. To meet the growing need for future-oriented decisions by city authorities, we developed a decision support system prototype that allows a strategic simulation-based evaluation of different logistics concepts regarding defined targets, e.g., pollutant emissions, traffic flow, space requirements, or economic efficiency on a city district level. An expert system for the strategic evaluation of logistics concepts on a city district level is integrated to achieve transferability and scalability.