The Environmental Impact of Inland Empty Container Movements Within Two-Depot Systems

Abstract

Inefficient inland repositioning of empty containers between depots remains a persistent challenge in container logistics, contributing significantly to unnecessary truck movements, elevated operational costs, and increased CO2 emissions. Acknowledging the importance of this problem, a large amount of relevant literature has appeared. The objective of this paper is to track the empty container flow between ports, empty depots, inland terminals, and customer premises. Additionally, it aims to simulate and assess CO2 emissions, capturing the dynamic interactions between different agents. In this study, agent-based modeling (ABM) was proposed to simulate the empty container movements with an emphasis on inland transportation. ABM is an emerging approach that is increasingly used to simulate complex economic systems and artificial market behaviours. NetLogo was used to incorporate real-world geographic data and quantify CO2 emissions based on truckload status and to evaluate the other operational aspects. Behavior Space was also utilized to systematically conduct multiple simulation experiments, varying parameters to analyze different scenarios. The results of the study show that customer demand frequency plays a crucial role in system efficiency, affecting container availability and logistical tension.