Category «Research»

WEF about the future of logistics real estate

The WEF presented a report on the future of real estate. In recent years, industrial portfolios have been dominated by logistics facilities as the double-digit growth of e-commerce (both B2C and B2B), coupled with the steady increase in consumer spending, has driven demand in the asset class ‘industrial and logistics’.

Service trip attraction in commercial establishments

Commercial traffic in urban areas has not received the level of attention it deserves. Notwithstanding recent research on urban freight trip generation, other components of commercial traffic, such as commercial service traffic, have been largely overlooked. This is ironic, as the service sector represents a major and growing portion of urban and metropolitan economies.

Research: possibilities for cargo trams in city logistics

Trams are usually used to carry passengers, but across Europe, there are some examples of using them for carrying freight (‘CarGoTram’ of Dresden, Germany and the ‘Cargo-Tram’ of Zurich, Switzerland). There are specific conditions that provide a possibility of using trams for cargo delivery in urban areas. They concern infrastructural, economic, and organizational issues.

MIT: e-commerce leads to lower emissions

With e-commerce setting records during the 2020 holiday season and package deliveries forecast to grow by 80% over the next decade, a new study by the MIT Real Estate Innovation Lab reveals the tangible environmental benefits of online shopping versus bricks-and-mortar.

Would customers be willing to use an alternative delivery concept for the last-mile?

B2C e-commerce is still one of the fastest-growing marketing channels yielding less bundled direct-to-consumer deliveries. Last-mile deliveries cause costs and emissions especially in urban areas with a high density of online customers. Therefore, stakeholders in the context of last-mile parcel deliveries are interested in implementing efficient, innovative, and ecological last-mile concepts.

Research: strategic 3D printing in a city logistics context

Recently, 3D Printing (3DP) has started disrupting transportation worldwide by providing enormous simplifications to transportation requirements, especially in the context of city logistics. In the near future, the potential exists to replace multi-echelon transportation hubs with integrated city logistics and 3D printing manufacturing hubs. 

Research: cost‐optimal truck‐and‐robot routing for last‐mile delivery

During recent years, several companies have introduced small autonomous delivery robots and evidenced their technical applicability in field studies. However, a holistic planning framework for routing and utilizing these robots is still lacking. Current literature focuses mainly on the logistical performance of delivery using autonomous robots, ignoring real-world limitations, and does not assess the respective …