As the road to a sustainable freight system seems more complex than ever, how can we accelerate the development of a efficient transport system? The HITS project examines this and will present their results so-far in this seminar.
We offer the opportunity to present results from your research for international fellow researchers. If your research topic is related to urban logistics and you would like to present, contact
Peter Georén
.
The roadmap to a sustainable freight system seems more complex than ever, especially for urban settings. Commercial drivers at play drive developments but not necessarily to a more sustainable system.
As part of a Swedish research effort to find sustainable urban freight solutions we invite international researchers to a webinar on the topic. The webinar aims at disseminating, sharing and discussing academic research results from the Swedish project called HITS as the project has reached half-time results. There is also opportunity for fellow international researchers to present results.
Join us and listen to research findings in the field, and discussing the number one question: How can we reach more sustainable urban logistics, spanning from freight concepts to system level aspects?
The presentations are on a scientific level, similar to a conference presentation. After each presentation there will be time for discussion and questions and at the end there will be a panel discussion with reflections.
Speakers
The research team in the HITS project is composed of academic and commercial researchers that work with different subjects, from system effects to data ecosystems to logistic concepts. Click on the tabs to see their specific topics.
Claudia
has a Master degree in Energy for Smart Cities, and in June 2020 started a PhD on the topic "System effect and design of sustainable systems" in the project HITS2024.
Understanding the system level effects of logistics concepts -a model on city hubs
Claudia’s role in the project is to simulate the effects on a system level of different interventions on the urban logistics system (i.e., new business models, services, technologies but also policies and incentives). High-level research questions that sheis exploring include: How can a sustainable urban logistics system be defined? How can such system be modelled? What concepts would lead to a sustainable system? She will present her framework for sustainability assessment and how she has used the framework to categorize various concepts in the urban logistics system, based on existing literature. One key concept that is analysed in more depth is urban consolidation centres, or logistics hubs, as it has been chosen at the project level to be the focus forthe next years of demo. As the goal of Claudia’s research is to build a system dynamics simulation model of the urban logistics system, she will present the first steps of building such model based on the literature work and on a group model building process. The presentation will include both insights on the methodology and on preliminary results from the modelling process.
Jonas
has a master’s degree in mechanical and process engineering, and in January 2018 started a PhD in Transport Science on the topic "Optimization and simulation of future urban mobility concepts".
Multi-purpose modular vehicle routing -Sequential and simultaneous consolidation approaches
In the project Jonas is building and solving novel vehicle routing operations. The future vehicle concepts studied in the models allow for the sequential or simultaneous consolidation of different demand types (i.e., passenger and freight transport). His research focuses on comparing the current transportation system with these novel mobility concepts by evaluating changes in usercost (i.e., waiting times, travel times) and operator costs (fleet size, vehicle utilization, travel distance). The presentation is about the results of the two studies conducted, namely the sequential sharing and the simultaneous consolidation vehicle concepts. The presentation positions the vehicle operations in the state-of-the-art vehicle routing research and highlights the significance of the work. Besides the results, the methodology and experimental design for the studies is presented. A series of scenarios using an exact optimization algorithm and an adaptive large neighbourhood search algorithmare solved and compared. The presented results can be used by practitioners and policymakers to decide on whether the consolidation of demand flows with multi-purpose vehicles will yield benefits compared to existing fleet configurations.
Annette
is a guest researcher at ITRL during 2021-2022. She works since 14 years at Scania and holds a position as senior data scientist at Scania IT. Annette obtained a PhD in Solid State Physics in 2002 from Uppsala University.
Data sharing eco-systems for distribution transportation
Today’s business development in the transportation sector, such as value adding services for sustainability, relies to a high extent on data sharing between the involved actors. But the sharing is still often hampered. A major reason for this is that the field is still new, not fully defined, and in many case lack a fully functional eco-system to thrive in. A data sharing eco-system is a complex socio-technical arrangement. Based on this Annette propose a framework of pre-requisites that need to be in place. These pre-requisites ranges from having sufficient amount and quality of data, over a secure exchange platform to adequately skilled organisations. The framework has also been tested towards use cases within HITS and use cases from the literature. In addition a list of potential added values are presented, such as goods volume forecasting, along with likely providers, beneficiaries and sustainability scoring.
Hesselgren
is researcher in design for sustainable mobility with special interest in how design can be used to support sustainable practices and which re-formulations are needed of design as a practice when aiming for sustainability transitions. Her research is transdisciplinary and use collaborative design methods to engage with other research disciplines as well as with citizens, stakeholders from public and private sector, and civil society. At ITRL Hesselgren is research program leader for Mobility of People that focus on changes of transport systems required to make these more sustainable, changes caused by new technologies, and how people and technologies co-perform together in sustainable futures. Based within the unit Integrated Product Development and Design at the Department of Machine Design which belongs to the School of Industrial Engineering and Management at KTH Royal Institute of Technology she is engaged in education and teaching service design and design for sustainability at master level. Furthermore, she is responsible for the master program track Industrial Design Engineering.
Organizing for collaboration and sharing: Possibilities for transport system innovations through off-peak deliveries
To meet climate targets and reach sustainability development goals, transitions of transport systems are necessary. Future sustainable transportation needs to be equitable, efficient, safe, and green. Transport systems need to become less resource intensive whereby sharing and utilizing resources more efficiently can be routes forward. However, for well-functioning sharing the involved stakeholders need to collaborate. Thus, sharing resources can mean to share material and physical resources, such as vehicles and places, but it can also mean to share immaterial and intangible resources, such as time and responsibilities. Through exploring logistic deliveries at off-peak hours in Stockholm-based trials in an interview study, possibilities for organising for transport system innovations have been investigated. These range from alternative types of collaborations and partnership relations. With emerging digital technologies, possibilities for re-configurations of sociotechnical systems arise. However, to take full advantage of these new possibilities, organisations need to acknowledge changing roles and work routines. Moreover, organising for innovations require willingness to test and experiment with alternative solutions.
Kristina
has worked for the Swedish government in various positions including drafting the proposal for legislation regarding autonomous vehicles driving on public roads. Her research at RISE focuses on legal challenges for the automotive and transport sectors. She is responsible for RISE’s policy lab working on identifying what amendments to existing policies, regulations and rules that are necessary to facilitate introduction of new technology on the market. She is currently involved in projects regarding autonomous vehicles, geofencing, MaaS, AI and data & vehicles.
Legal challenges off-peak deliveries
The purpose of the Scania Hits project is to demonstrate the possibilities of accelerating the development of efficient and sustainable freight transport within cities. One demonstrator is about off-peak delivery. A previous project has shown that a carrier can increase its efficiency by 30% by switching to off-peak delivery. So why is this not happening already?
One obstacle is the legislation that divides the freight transport chain into three different actors: seller/sender, buyer/receiver, and the carrier. The seller and the buyer dictate the terms of the transport chain and the carrier is only a performer. The legislation maintains the power structure and makes it difficult for the carrier to implement alternative routines and processes. In off-peak delivery seller and buyer will not gain much in efficiency and therefore must receive some other form of incentive or dis-incentive to support the carriers shift to off-peak deliveries.
Sebastian
is a senior researcher and expert in the field of sustainable transport- and logistic systems. The research activities revolve around the core question of assessing energy, emissions and resource utilisation by applying a life cycle perspective. Sebastian has been active in the field since 1995 in various research and consultancy positions. Since 2012 he is part of the transport and mobility team at IVL Swedish Environmental research institute. Sebastian holds a degree in Physics from the University of Gothenburg (1992) and a licentiate thesis in sustainable Logistics at Chalmers (1999)
Sönke von Wieding
is a senior researcher at SSPA Sweden AB within sustainable logistics. His primary research interest is to advance the understanding of the interaction between logistics, transport and land-use and to develop solutions to improve the sustainability of logistics operations. His expertise is in impact assessment of logistics measures, urban freight planning and intermodal transport. Sönke holds a master’s degree in transport engineering from the University of Hanover, a master’s degree in supply chain management from Chalmers University of Technology. He received his PhD in Sustainable Logistics from Chalmers University of Technology in 2012. The thesis received the DB Schenker Award 2012 for the PhD thesis’ scientific excellence, degree of innovation, practical relevance, and benefit to the environment and society.
Modelling environmental potential of consolidated distribution
Our role in the project is to estimate the sustainability potential of several innovative delivery solutions developed in the project. We do this by comparing the external costs of business-as-usual distribution activities in the city area of Södermalm in Stockholm, with consolidated deliveries using a full-scale consolidation system utilizing different hub solutions. The external costs included in the analysis are cost of congestion, climate impact, impact on public health and ecosystems (air pollution), noise and accidents. To analyse the sustainability potential of the solutions we calculate first a business-as-usual scenario, i.e. the external costs of today’ system without consolidation. We then calculate the external cost of several hub-scenarios utilizing different hub and transport system designs.
