Planning and Optimization Methods for Advanced Urban Logistics Systems at Tactical Level - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 147

Concerning strategic planning, the first issue we observe is that of culturally and
socially-aware organization and business models, as for cultural impacts 1 of such
schemes and need for somewhat tailored solutions (for example in North Amer-
ica). Then, we observe questions related to public policy (Dablanc 2010 ; Ball-
antine and Lindholm 2013 ), stakeholders behavior (Marcucci and Gatta 2013 ),
partnerships and collaboration (Gonzalez-Feliu et al. 2013a ; Morana et al. 2013 ),
which have impacts on supply models. Another important questions is that of
demand identification, using modeling techniques (Ambrosini et al. 2008 ; Anand
et al. 2012 ; Comi et al. 2012 ; Gonzalez-Feliu and Routhier 2012 ). Another cate-
gory of challenges is that of defining suitable on models and tools to evaluate city
logistics impacts, to pursuit before-after analysis and study long-term implications
of city logistics actions and solutions (Gonzalez-Feliu et al. 2012a , b ).
In tactical planning, it is important to develop comprehensive urban transpor-
tation planning, taking into account the integration with personal and public
transport, the impacts of ITS and the main issues related to day-before planning.
The main issues in operations research refer to system, service and operations
planning, including models, algorithms and instruments to support practitioners in
their tasks.
Complementarily to strategic planning (related to system design, platform
location and resource dimensioning) and to operational planning (real-time and
short term organization, optimization and follow-up), tactical planning is related to
service network design, to crew and vehicle scheduling, time issues and vehicle
routing. Although such questions are in-depth studied for several versions of
single-tier systems, it is not the same for multi-tier schemes (Gonzalez-Feliu
2012b , 2013a ). In next section, tactical planning issues related to two-tier city
logistics schemes are presented in order to support city planners and carrier
managers in their tactical choices and planning issues.
3 Tactical Planning Issues for Advanced City Logistics
Systems
In city logistics, when focusing on inter-establishments, we study the transport
flows related to commodities into, out of and within the city or the urban area.
Since the main component of third party transport is made of LTL circuits, the
main combinatorial optimization problem related to city logistics is the vehicle
routing, and this at all planning levels (refs.)
In single-tier systems, vehicle routing problems are close to classical problems
studied in the literature (Toth and Vigo 2002 ; Golden et al. 2008 ). The main issues
related to vehicle routing in city logistics arise on the dynamic and time-dependent
1 In other words, the impacts of government actions on people and business, on business models,
taxation and refunding mechanisms, among others.