This paper delves into the zero-emission city logistics readiness of businesses located in the earmarked Dutch inner cities, which are gearing up towards decreasing the emissions attributable to urban logistics activities. Emission reduction is to be achieved by rolling out mandated zero-emission zones which are to be implemented in 30-40 Dutch cities from the 1st January 2025, with the dates set and municipalities planning towards the banning of diesel-fuelled commercial vehicles. This research seeks to determine the extent of zero-emission operational maturity by use of the zero-emission maturity model by examining the four biggest cities in the southern Dutch Province of Noord Brabant. The research shows a low level of awareness among companies in the cities of Eindhoven, Breda, ’s-Hertogenbosch, and Tilburg and calls for better methods of information dissemination, especially among the small to medium businesses who don't consider city logistics as their core business.@en

With the approach of the zero-emission zone implementation in 30-40 cities mandated by the Dutch climate agreement in 2025, comes the need to determine whether the SMEs located within these zones are aware of the coming changes. The zero emission zones are set to change how city logistics is currently being executed with the aim of decreasing emissions in the city centre by transitioning to zero emission vehicles and optimizing deliveries to create less flows. However, it is currently unclear whether small to medium businesses located within these zones know about the new regulations within their local municipalities. This article delves into the initial results of The Zero-Emission City Logistics Maturity QuickScans which are used to facilitate the determination of the maturity of small to medium enterprises in light of zero-emission city logistics operations.@en

Municipalities play an important role in tackling city logistics related matters, having many instruments at hand. However, it is not self-evident that all municipalities use these instruments to their full potential. A method to measure city logistics performance of municipalities can help in creating awareness and guidance, to ultimately lead to a more sustainable environment for inhabitants and businesses. Subsequently, this research is focused on a maturity model as a tool to assess the maturity level of a municipality for its performance-related city logistics process management. Various criteria for measuring city logistics performance are studied and based on that the model is populated through three focus fields (Technical, Social and Corporate, and Policy), branching out into six areas of development: Information and communication technology, urban logistics planning, Stakeholder communication, Public Private Partnerships, Subsidisation and incentivisation, and Regulations. The CL3M model was tested for three municipalities, namely, municipality of Utrecht, Den Bosch and Groningen. Through these maturity assessments it became evident the model required specificity complementary to the existing assessment interview, and thus a SWOT analysis should be added as a conclusion during the maturity assessment.@en

Consolidation of goods is a promising strategy for reducing city logistics problems. For the last two decades, the concept of urban consolidation centres (UCCs) has been implemented in different cities. UCCs that were started for special subsectors (e.g. construction material handling) are relatively successful; however, general purpose UCCs are not performing well at all. Most UCCs are financially dependent on government support. The UCC concept can be successfully implemented by developing a consistent subsidy or tax scheme aiming to internalize the negative external effects of conventional urban goods distribution. In this paper, we describe and test such policy - a delivery cap and price (DCAP) scenario, combined with a subsidy for a UCC alternative – to reduce carbon emissions for urban goods delivery. The scenario introduces a cap on goods deliveries made to shopkeepers by conventional vehicles, using so-called carbon credit points (CCPs). We demonstrate this policy with a stylized implementation of a city logistics agent based model for the inner city of Rotterdam. The results indicate that this financial scheme could positively influences the use of UCC, ensures its financial viability and significantly reduce the external effects of urban freight transport.

@en

Efficiency of city logistics activities suffers due to conflicting personal preferences and distributed decision making by multiple city logistics stakeholders. This is exacerbated by interdependency of city logistics activities, decision making with limited information and stakeholders’ preference for personal objectives over system efficiency. Accordingly, the key to understanding the causes of inefficiency in the city logistics domain is understanding the interaction between heterogeneous stakeholders of the system. With the capabilities of representing a system in a natural and flexible way, agent based modelling (ABM) is a promising alternative for the city logistics domain. This research focuses on developing a framework for the successful implementation of the ABM approach for the city logistics domain. The framework includes various elements – a multi-perspective semantic data model (i.e. ontology) and its validation, the development of an agent base model using this ontology, and a validation approach for the agent-based model. Conclusively, the framework shows that a rigorous course can be taken to successfully implement agent based modelling approach for the city logistics domain.@en

Agent-based modeling is used for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous entities aiming to assessing their effects on the system as a whole. At an abstract level, an agent-based model (ABM) is a representation of the many simple agents and interactions among them. The decision making of the agents is based on the rules given to them. In an ABM, the model output is the result of internal decision-making and may differ with alteration in the decision path. On the contrary, with the set of rules embedded in agents, their behavior is modeled to take a ‘certain action’ in a ‘certain situation’. It suggests that the internal decision making behavior of agents is truly responsible for the model output and thus it cannot be ignored while validating ABMs. This research article focuses on the validating agents’ behavior by evaluating decision-making processes of agents. For this purpose, we propose a validation framework based on a participatory simulation game. Using this framework we engage a human player (i.e. a domain stakeholder) to allow us to collect information about choices and validate the behavior of an individual agent. A proof-of-concept game is developed for a city logistics ABM to test the framework.@en