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Smart City Logistics Services and Sustainability
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Smart City Logistics Services and Sustainability

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Transportation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2022) | Viewed by 7469

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Anna Corinna Cagliano

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Management and Production Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, 10129, Italy
Interests: industrial logistics; city logistics; healthcare logistics; supply chain management; industrial facility design; complex systems; management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

In the last decade, the smart city issue has attracted the attention of both researchers and practitioners in an attempt to address the challenges currently characterizing urban areas, such as increased population, pollution, and congestion. The smart city notion unfolds in a number of domains including transport and mobility of both goods and people. City logistics refers to the optimized management of urban logistics flows by managing aspects associated with traffic conditions, energy consumption, and environment preservation. This Special Issue is focused on urban freight transportation. Not only the recent structural changes undergone by urban areas but also the digital transformation of commercial relationships, with the diffusion of e-commerce and omni-channel retail, have stressed the role of efficient city logistics. Frequent deliveries of limited quantities, if not single units, are required to satisfy a variety of customers with heterogeneous needs in terms of demand for products and associated services. The possibility of easily ordering online and receiving at home whatever one wants has increased emotional purchases, which in turn produce relevant return flows of goods, exacerbating city logistics complexity. Many organizational and operational solutions to improve urban freight distribution systems have been introduced, several of them relying on the latest available technologies. They include urban consolidation centres, parcel lockers, low emission zones, time window deliveries, dynamic routing, lay-by area monitoring and booking, low emission vehicle adoption, and crowd shipping. Ex ante and ex post studies of the impacts of city logistics strategies have been conducted. However, are these solutions really sustainable? What can be done to make them sustainable? This Special Issue welcomes papers about the operational, social, economic, and environmental sustainability of city logistics services. Contributors from different fields are invited to submit their papers based on both qualitative and quantitative analysis approaches.     

Prof. Dr. Anna Corinna Cagliano
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • City logistics decision-making and strategies
  • City logistics services
  • Enabling technologies
  • City logistics implications of emotional purchases
  • Reverse city logistics
  • Operational sustainability
  • Environmental and energy impacts
  • Green city logistics
  • Social impacts
  • Economic effects of city logistics strategies

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 572 KiB  
Article
On-Demand Logistics: Solutions, Barriers, and Enablers
by Giacomo Lozzi, Gabriele Iannaccone, Ila Maltese, Valerio Gatta, Edoardo Marcucci and Riccardo Lozzi
Sustainability 2022, 14(15), 9465; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14159465 - 02 Aug 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2806
Abstract
The urban freight sector provides an essential service by delivering goods that are required by shops, companies, and households at a specific place and time. However, the growth of e-commerce and the dawn of on-demand logistics (hereinafter ODL) have raised citizens’ expectations of [...] Read more.
The urban freight sector provides an essential service by delivering goods that are required by shops, companies, and households at a specific place and time. However, the growth of e-commerce and the dawn of on-demand logistics (hereinafter ODL) have raised citizens’ expectations of logistics systems, further stressing them and thereby increasing their operational and environmental costs. To the authors’ best knowledge, there are no extensive literature reviews specifically on the topic of ODL and on suggestions for policy prioritisation for tackling its effects. This paper aims at addressing this issue by providing an extensive literature review of ODL and its enablers. This research, after a thorough explanation of the ODL rationale, its trends, and its effects, analyses possible solutions to its inefficiencies, focusing on enablers and barriers. Furthermore, it illustrates and clarifies the role of external factors in influencing ODL. Finally, it proposes a systematic evaluation approach by identifying knowledge gaps and consequently defining the subsequent actions needed, broken down by the individual influencing components, rendering these solutions compatible with the status quo and effective for solving the highlighted issues. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Smart City Logistics Services and Sustainability)
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15 pages, 303 KiB  
Article
Value Proposition for Sustainable Last-Mile Delivery. A Retailer Perspective
by Giulio Mangano, Giovanni Zenezini and Anna Corinna Cagliano
Sustainability 2021, 13(7), 3774; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13073774 - 29 Mar 2021
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3892
Abstract
The sustainability of last-mile (LM) freight delivery is crucial to add value to the stakeholders in the distribution chain. However, its achievement is often hindered by a poor consideration of their needs by both literature and practice. The goal of this paper is [...] Read more.
The sustainability of last-mile (LM) freight delivery is crucial to add value to the stakeholders in the distribution chain. However, its achievement is often hindered by a poor consideration of their needs by both literature and practice. The goal of this paper is to address the point of view of local retailers by exploring their needs about innovative LM delivery services and identifying sustainable value propositions (VP). A survey was submitted to retailers operating in the limited traffic zone of Torino (Italy). The survey data were analyzed by a factor analysis using a principal component analysis (PCA) to extract the factors. A correlation analysis was also conducted between the needs and selected contextual variables. The results show that retailers accept higher costs for more reliable deliveries and stock reduction. Retailers also correlate punctuality and flexibility because flexible and on-time deliveries allow for better inventory management, higher control, and, in turn, improved customer service level. This work is one of the first research attempts to quantify local retailers’ LM delivery needs and provides guidelines about how to design value-added logistics services. Moreover, from a practical point of view, the analysis shows the main VP that managers and practitioners should consider in the development of LM initiatives. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Smart City Logistics Services and Sustainability)
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