Mainly three different types of transport motivate the urban logistics, namely the intra-urban transport (i.e. local transport), inter-urban transport (i.e. the transport being part of longer transport chains) and return/waste transport. Common for all three, is:

• Urban transport is dominated by road transport.
• The development of vehicle and engine technologies has led to an increased energy efficiency of road transport. The diesel engine is the dominant engine technology at present, but hybrid vehicles, electrical vehicles and gas driven engines are entering the market.
• The transportation objectives to be fulfilled by urban freight transport are managed by the freight distribution management responsible. This responsibility is commercially driven in the EU area, and the market is open for all companies.
• The traffic management objectives in the urban areas are the responsibility of the municipalities and/or the authorities. The traffic management responsible manages the total set of needs as stated by the public.
• There is a lack of both organisational and technical interoperability between the freight distribution management and the traffic management responsible. This causes the drivers of the vehicles to be under command of two managers while carrying out the transport.
• The load factor in urban transport is low. This is the case within the individual companies, but also across the different companies operating in an urban area.

The urban logistics as of today is far from being zero emission. Road transport is dominating urban freight transport. The use of ICT cannot by itself improve this situation as long as there is no available infrastructure for other transport modes than road transport in the urban areas, or as long as the engine and vehicle technologies are not mature enough with respect to use of non-fossil energy. This article approaches improvements in engines and vehicles before discussing how ICT can support the use of vehicle with mixed types of engines in urban freight transport so that the emission can be as low as possible.

There are many types of information and communication technology applied in the urban logistics.

• Back office systems. The planning of both fleet and personnel utilisation as well as the handling of customer relationship are functions that have been supported by information technology. Overall route planning has been performed back office.
• On board units. In the latter years, the collection and also party processing of data have been distributed to mobile units operated by the drivers. These units have evolved, and do include readers and scanners, and several applications are available.
• Interoperability. Most of the freight distribution management solutions are proprietary solutions, even though the more modern solutions (build by use of modern software development tools) have the capabilities for exchange of information. 

• Road network monitoring. The traffic management centres in the urban areas in Europa take the advantage of information and communication technologies to both monitor and control (sections of) the road network. The monitoring is done by means of cameras and different types of censors that in most cases communicate the collected data to the back office control systems.
• Back office systems. The back office traffic management systems are to a certain degree standardised systems, often with tailored functionality. Some countries have organised an exchange of information between the different traffic management centres, very often by means of (DATEX II based) batch transfer of data. In the latter years, also more real time based updating has been implemented.

Possible Improvements

The main improvements have to be within engine and vehicle technology if the urban freight transport will reach zero emission. The change to 100% emission free engines will be a long transition. Measures for optimisation of the utilisation of lower emission urban freight transport during this transition time can benefit from the use of ICT. The main key to improvement in urban freight transport is cooperation between the different stakeholders. The main stakeholders involved are the traffic management responsible, the freight distribution management (including fleet management) responsible and the drivers.

There are two main improvements that must be in place to reach the target of zero emission urban logistics:

• The development of the engine technology must reach a point where electrical motors have the same performance, range and cost as a traditional diesel engine.
• The production and transportation of electric power into an urban area must be zero emission.

In a shorter time, to reduce the emission, more energy efficient vehicles should be developed, and the ratio between traffic and transport needs to be improved. The utilisation of the fleet of freight vehicles with mixed engine technologies can also be supported by ICT.

The following improvements and consequent benefits are expected:

• The freight distribution management can use solutions for optimisation internally to increase the load factor.
• By using ICT to exchange information between different commercial companies running vehicles in the same urban area it will be possible to utilise the individual fleets across the companies. If the solutions include tools for calculating the economic benefit, and also distribute it, the economy for each of the companies will be better than running vehicles with low loading factor.
• By exchanging freight and vehicle information between the freight distribution managers and the traffic managers in an urban area, it will be possible for the traffic management to take actively part in the planning of the total transportation objectives in the area. Being able to track, and partly control, individual vehicles, the traffic management function can encourage the use of vehicles with higher load factor either by giving advantages, or by adding restrictions, in the traffic.
• If more goods information is exchanged it will be possible to utilise the co-transport of different types of goods in the same local area.

• By including the SMARTGRID concept for power supply networks; information about optimal charge stations can be merged with information about the transportation task on-board an electrical vehicle, and the combination of this information can be used to make optimal routes for these vehicles.
• Information from the traffic management about green zones in the urban area can be communicated to the systems controlling the engines in hybrid vehicles, and the vehicles can then use the electrical engines where required by traffic management.
• By exchanging information about all requested transportation task in an urban area, the use of vehicles can be planned across commercial companies such that all vehicles get a shorter run, this will benefit the electrical vehicles.

By analysing the state-of-the-art, the challenges and the possible improvements it is clear that the most important measure to be taken is to strengthen the organisational interoperability between the traffic manager, the freight distribution manager and the driver of the vehicle. This includes also the interoperability between different freight distribution managers. To be able to explore and strengthen this interoperability, ICT can play an important role. There are different layers that need to be harmonised before the organisational harmonisation can take place. The different levels can this is pictured like this:

Harmonisation for some of the levels is mature, i.e. the technology standards, while for the other levels there are identified ICT challenges.

Main ICT-related challenges:

To achieve the two improvements, the following challenges will have to be met by ICT research and development:

• Hardware standardisation

A freight vehicle changes characteristics when certain types of goods are loaded or unloaded. The possibility for the goods to store, process and exchange information about itself is explored (Intelligent Goods concept). The same counts for the vehicle, it is possible for the vehicle to store, process and exchange information. This exchange of information must be standardised, so that every type of goods, from every transporter in an urban area can exchange information to every freight vehicle. The standardisation must also make it possible for every freight vehicle to exchange information with the installed infrastructure equipment.

• Definition of the set of logistics services

The definition of a logistics service is not clear in the today´s situation. Much of the differences are due to the different traditions in different modes of transport. The larger companies have their own definitions and descriptions of the services. Much of the goods entering or leaving an urban area is transported by means of railways, airfreight or water born transport. There is a need to fully harmonise the definition of logistics services so that the utilisation of freight vehicles in an urban area can be done across incoming/outgoing transport modes, as well as across different companies and organisations. The needs of large organisations, municipalities and SMEs must be taken into the requirements for the definition.

• Further development and support for cooperative systems deployment

The CVIS architecture gives a good diversion between basic services, applied services and applications to be shared among the stakeholders in urban freight transport. There is a need to further develop and harmonise both the content of the cooperative systems, but also to support the deployment in the different urban areas in Europe. This deployment must be harmonised with the traffic and freight distribution management systems for railway, air transport and water born transport, and also with the deployment on the trans European road network.

• Bridging of the gap between transport and traffic concepts

The driver is controlled by two main objectives, the transportation objective to be fulfilled and the traffic-handling objective to be fulfilled. Since these two objectives are different, and are the responsibility of different types of organisation, there is a lack of harmonisation of both functions and information sets. ICT can support the bridging between these two ways of thinking, providing a harmonised and uniform way of communication with the driver.

• Interoperability between traffic management and freight distribution management

When the concepts of these two responsible are harmonised, the interoperability by means of process harmonisation and communication must take place. This will be the building blocks in the fully interoperable organisations.

Other challenges

The strengthening calls for changes in business models to take advantages of the possibilities given by the technology.

Business models in urban logistics are discussed by by (Goldman and Gorham), (Anderson, Allen et al. 2005) and (Macario, Galelo et al. 2008).

References

Anderson, S., J. Allen, et al. (2005). "Urban logistics - how can it meet policy makers´ sustainability objectives?" Journal of Transport Geography 13(1): 71-81.

Goldman, T. and R. Gorham "Sustainable urban transport: Four innovative directions." Technology in Society 28(1-2): 261-273.

Macario, R., A. Galelo, et al. (2008). "Business models in urban logistics." Ingenieria & Desarrollo(24): 77-96.