MEGAPROJECT: SIMPLIFYING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
FOCUS AREA: transport and mobility
CHALLENGE: Efficient freight transport in urban areas
CHALLENGE DESCRIPTION:
Efficient freight transport in urban areas is an increasing challenge across Europe. The key challenges faced by transport companies operating in cities can be grouped into the following themes:
- Competition, e.g. red-ocean competition, a focus on price reduction and a shortage of drivers. Increasing demands from customers, e.g. precise delivery and short time-slots, full tracking and transparency, increasing volumes particularly in the parcel segment, and demands for environmental impact calculations.
- Optimization, e.g. improvements in distribution network design, freight balance issues and collaboration horizontally and vertically in the supply chain.
- Infrastructure under pressure in several urban areas, e.g. a combination of congestion issues and a widespread political focus on minimizing accessibility and parking spaces to keep cars out of the cities which in turn makes city access difficult for freight vehicles.
In this challenge the students participating will address different challenges within the topics mentioned above in their projects. An artificial test-dataset will be generated which shows the deliveries of trucks of four artificial companies within Aalborg City centre. This dataset will be shared among the groups participating. Thereby it will be possible for groups working with for example delivery-route optimization to compare their results.
To facilitate the collaboration between the groups three seminars and a company visit will be arranged by Kristian Hegner Reinau during the semester. The first seminar will be in the beginning of the semester. At this seminar each group will present their project ideas and receive input from the other groups, possible from other educations. The objective is that every group gains feedback which can be used in the problem formulation in the project, as well as to generate a shared understanding of the ongoing projects among the participating student groups. The second seminar is located in the middle of the semester. At this seminar each group will present the preliminary findings of their work and discuss this. Finally, the third seminar will be located in the end of the semester where the final results and implications for further works will be discussed. The company visit will be arranged as early in the semester as the COVID-19 situation allows, at a logistics company operating in Aalborg, to give the students a practical view into the daily operations of a logistics company. This visit is dependent upon the COVID-19 situation and the willingness of companies to receive visitors.
IMPACTED SDGS:
PROPOSED PROJECT PROBLEMS:
- Calculating the environmental impact of urban fright transport in mixed fleet situations (diesel + electric vehicles)
- The role of public actors and infrastructure providers: Balancing car minimization initiatives with truck packability
- Horizontal and vertical collaboration in urban freight transport
- Optimization of parcel delivery in urban areas – evaluating different approaches to last-mile delivery
- Optimizing use of drivers in relation to driver scarcity
CHALLENGE PROPOSER:
Kristian Hegner Reinau
Built Environment
khr@build.aau.dk
CO-PROPOSERS:
Massimo Pizzol
Planning
massimo@plan.aau.dk
Claus Lassen
Architecture, Design and Media Technology
clla@create.aau.dk
Ulrik Nyman
Computer Science
ulrik@cs.aau.dk