Among the various solutions considered for a better management of urban logistics, the concept of Urban Consolidation Centers (UCC) is one of the most promising for integrating and coordinating flows. The aim is to better fill the trucks used for good transportation in urban areas, reduce distances travelled by trucks and then reduce nuisances such as congestion, noise and pollution without worsening economic objectives. Whereas practical experiments do not systematically show great improvement of cost or lead time when using UCC because of offloadings, various stake-holders estimate that using UCC will be a main stream in the future, when the various actors involved have reached a maturity phase.
This research project has two complementary objectives:
- construct a simulation tool for testing a logistics urban network including a UCC belt all around the city; propose decision-support tools for designing and sizing the distribution system associated with a given context; propose operations research models and methods for optimal urban freight transportation planning. Given the development of new communication technologies in logistics flows tracking, various scenarii including these technologies will be evaluated;
- analyse functional and organizational constraints and locks that could prevent settling successfully the proposed logistics systems, i.e. identify the key conditions of applicability of this system for practical use.
The project is based on a group of Accademic partners expert on transport and having complementary knowledge covering a large spectrum of different domains (operations research, computer science, new information and comunication technologies, human science).
