Category «Research»

VREF conference in Gothenburg (S): Oct 14-16, 2020

The 4rd VREF Conference on Urban Freight will present current issues influencing urban freight research and discuss the complexity of designing urban space and managing flows for liveable cities. The theme for the 2020 Conference will be “Urban freight and liveable cities: Interactions between planning, design, and business for scalable innovations”.

Exploring the future of city logistics via waterways

Smart, efficient and innovative solutions are needed to optimize urban transport. What distribution and infrastructure technologies have vast potential in providing integrated logistics solutions for the city of Amsterdam? What role could waterway networks play with regard to the transportation of people and goods?

Research: integrating first-mile pickup and last-mile delivery

In a recent paper, researchers analyze the route efficiency trade-offs that emerge from combining first-mile pickup and last-mile delivery operations in an urban distribution system. They build on the literature on continuum approximation of optimal route distances and propose adjustment factors that account for the effects of integrated pickup and delivery operations.

Research on emissions in urban construction

To achieve a more climate-friendly future practical steps need to be taken in the development and construction of cities. C40 Cities partnered with Arup and the University of Leeds to publish Building and Infrastructure Consumption Emissions, a report highlighting key opportunities to reduce construction emissions.

Can smart locks provide a solution to delivery failure?

The number of consumers that make online purchases is growing, together with the frequency in which these purchases are made. This change in consumer behavior revitalized the practice of home delivery. Consumers prefer their homes in favor of alternative locations, despite the fair chance that they are not present at the time of delivery.

Understanding the fragmented demand for urban transportation for nanostores in emerging markets

The demand for goods transportation in emerging markets is fragmented, mainly due to the unstructured and informal ordering behavior of the many small, traditional retailers in these markets. In a new paper, Boulaksil et. al. study such small traditional retailers located in the neighborhoods of big cities in emerging markets. They call them nanostores.