An agent-based simulation framework to evaluate urban logistics schemes

Abstract

Inefficient urban freight transport has a negative impact on both livability in cities and profit margins in the supply chain. Urban logistics schemes, consisting of governmental policies and company initiatives, attempt to address these problems. However, successful schemes are difficult to realize due to the divergent objectives of the agents involved in urban logistics. Traditional optimization techniques fall short when evaluating schemes, as they do not capture the required change in behavior of autonomous agents. To properly evaluate schemes, we develop an agentbased simulation framework that assesses the interaction between five types of autonomous agents. Compared to existing studies in this field, we contribute by (i) explicitly including company-driven initiatives, and (ii) adopting a supply chain-wide perspective. We illustrate the working of our framework by testing a number of schemes on a virtual network.