Sustainable Transport Models by Simulation

Abstract

Imagine a network of manufacturing SMEs in an industrial district willing to aggregate their transport demand for sharing trucks and routes; or a municipality willing to smooth down the rush-hour traffic generated by people reaching or living their work places. In these and possibly many other cases the introduction of the new transport model implies investments and a deep revision of organizational processes. Therefore the decision should be taken being sure to choose the most sustainable solution among the possible alternatives. This calls for quantitative estimations of the transport model impact that only simulation can actually produce. This chapter introduces first the simulation approach in logistics as an effective work method. Then it describes the functionality of a running simulation tool, the variables it considers, the logic of the simulation algorithm, the quantitative indicators it produces. Finally, it presents three real-life scenarios where the simulation approach was successfully employed in the last years.