1,720,970 research outputs found
Sustainable Logistics in Urban Areas: Innovative Approaches for Externalities Reduction in Smart Cities
Get PDFGlobalization and e-commerce lead the actual growing trends of home delivered goods. The increase of inhabitants in the cities requires more services for the mobility of people. In the coming years, the increasing demand of freight and people transport in urban areas will further stress their negative impacts or externalities. An externality is defined as a cost arising “when the social or economic activities of one group of persons have an impact on another group and when that impact is not fully accounted, or compensated for, by the first group”. The Smart City concept promotes a new vision based on the radical reduction of negative impacts in cities through the use of technological, methodological and organizational innovations. Smart mobility is one of the pillars of this new idea. Several technological and organizational improvements are available in scientific literature such as Electric Vehicles (EVs), ICT tools and systems, Autonomous Vehicles (AVs), different usage schemes in urban mobility, policies and rules, and efficient urban mobility management. A new arising concept that could integrate these innovations and strongly reduce externalities in the urban areas is the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) paradigm. People are interested in moving from one point to another in the city and through these new technologies different mobility alternatives are available. The same concept can be considered for goods delivery in urban areas. A high level of service is an important factor in engaging users towards sustainable mobility. The analysis of the last mile logistics innovations shows that it is possible to increase sustainability, reduce the transport externalities in the urban area and, at the same time, improve the companies’ economic results. In urban people mobility, sharing, pooling, and rental systems are also growing thanks to the new types of EVs available on the market such as Electric Light Vehicles, electric kick scooter and Segway. Sharing mobility systems have great potential in cities because they perfectly integrate with public transport to perform short trips or the last leg of the trip in the case of public transport lack or low frequency. In this context, identifying new strategies and ICT innovations to promote the electro-mobility, to improve the efficiency of organizational methods both in freight transport for the last mile logistics and for the people mobility is the aim of this PhD thesis. The crowd-sourcing paradigm and user centric approaches are at the basis of the proposed method solutions in order to reduce the urban externalities. Scientific literature proposes different approaches in the field of policies and rules mainly based on prohibitions and charges; users, on the other hand, can be involved through games and incentive schemes. Economic behaviour, a branch of cognitive science, proposes the positive incentive to define the “nudge” paradigm, in order to help people, make better decisions if they act rationally or if well-informed. In a station based EVs sharing system the relocation process is a fundamental activity to ensure a high service level to users. Relocation is expensive and does not contribute to improve environmental sustainability since additional transport means are adopted to fulfill it. Thus, the idea of involving users in the relocation process through an innovative incentive mechanism can lead to jointly reduce externalities in the urban area and to guarantee high service level to users. Similarity, customers can be involved in the relocation of goods between stores in the city. In addition, the optimization of the incentive-based approach can be applied in the goods cross-distribution between shops and a warehouse in an urban area. The proposed method allows to have both environmental and economic advantages and further engages users in a more sustainable vision with credits to spend on the mobility service or company products. The PhD thesis structure is as follows: 1. State of the art analysis of the transport externalities in urban areas with a focus on the approaches to reduce negative impacts in people mobility and last mile logistics; an evaluation of gaps and achievable targets is proposed. 2. Definition of a new user-centric approaches to develop ICT tools and platform for promoting electro-mobility in urban areas; a Serious Game App developed with the aim of increasing citizens awareness in the use of EVs is detailed. 3. Analysis of the relocation problem in EVs / ELVs sharing systems and innovative strategies for involving users through optimized incentive-based approaches; both a centralized and a distributed optimization approaches developed to reduce the total relocation costs, including external costs are described. In addition, numerical experiments with EVs and ELVs demonstrate the potential benefits of the approaches. 4. Analysis of last mile logistics innovations and definition of a new optimization incentive based approach for the goods relocation and cross-distribution in urban areas; numerical experiments show the internal and external costs reduction achievable by adopting the proposed approach. 5. Conclusions of this work and future research developments
A Framework of a Conceptual Model to manage the Food Lost and Waste in the Agri-Food supply chain
No full textFood loss and waste (FLW) are significant opportunities for the agri-food sector. The FLW management includes all activities allowing to prevent, reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover the discarded food from the market during the postharvest supply chain.
Although many strategies allow pursuing these actions, in most cases the availability of FLW generated in Primary Processing Centers does not meet the demand of stakeholders able to manage it. To increase the environmental, economic, and social benefits of FLW reuse, suitable strategies have to be adopted. Consistent with this aim, a conceptual model to be implemented in a business-to-business web platform is proposed to support the decision-maker in identifying the best FLW management strategy under a sustainable perspective, adopting a multicriteria decision method. The numerical simulation results proved the model's effectiveness in identifying the most appropriate FLW management strategy within a set of alternatives
Agri-food loss and waste management: Win-win strategies for edible discarded fruits and vegetables sustainable reuse
No full textIn the world, a large amount of food is lost or becomes waste along the agri-food supply chain. Circular Economy models in the agri-food systems can reduce the amount of food loss and waste generated in the agri-food supply chain by using them as a new resource. In the case of fruits and vegetables, loss and waste account for 45% in the whole supply chain, being processing stage responsible of up to 18% of losses. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been carried out to investigate the most effective sustainable strategies aiming to reuse the food losses in the fruits and vegetables industry. Four main research areas emerged from the SLR: reuse for human consumption, animal feeding, recovery for matter-energy use, and integration into new business models. A sustainable assessment framework is proposed to compare the different strategies. Among these, the human consumption area includes more sustainable strategies, classified according to four classes (i.e., environment, business, ICT, and consumer behavior). They have been analysed to identify the existing knowledge gaps and open issues. The results show new scientific perspectives and open research opportunities
Goods relocation management in city fashion retailers with an incentive system
Get PDFThe goods relocation among fashion retailers located in the same city is a daily activity carried out by trucks. The related transport externalities in the urban area have a significant weight for the citizen quality of life. The reduction in the use of heavy and polluting vehicles through innovative sharing strategies is one of the most promising strategies to minimize externalities in urban areas. In this paper a goods relocation management approach for city fashion retailers involving customers is presented. The idea is to propose to loyal customers a voucher to be spent in the store as a reward (prize in the following) for the package delivery from one shop to another; this system can be developed by an app. In the case that no customer accepts, the company trucks will perform the service. This method allows having a double advantage: customer loyalty and externalities reduction caused by moving the trucks in the city. To this aim, an integer linear programming problem is formalized to manage the involve users in the goods relocation process by the proposed prizes. A simulation is presented to show the application of the methodology in the fashion retailers
A Review of Last Mile Logistics Innovations in an Externalities Cost Reduction Vision
Get PDFIn this paper, a review of the recent scientific literature contributions on innovative strategies for last mile logistics, focusing on externalities cost reduction, is presented. Transport is causing problems in urban areas, in particular in freight transport: modern cities need solutions to reduce externalities costs such as congestion, pollution and others, which have increased in the last few years, especially due to the growth of goods delivery. Online sales and globalization lead to new trends in freight transport, and moreover, a larger quantity of goods is expected to be delivered in the next future. In this context, most of the delivered goods end up in the city centers. Last mile logistics is the least efficient stage of the supply chain and comprises up to 28% of the total delivery cost. Therefore, the improvement of last mile logistics and a significant externalities reduction are very important challenges for researchers. New technologies and transport means, innovative techniques and organizational strategies allow handling in a more effective way the last mile delivery in urban areas. Based on the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method, recent papers that significantly contributed, with original proposals, to the reduction of externalities in urban logistics are identified and analyzed in this work. Furthermore, a classification of the papers dealing with the externality reduction problem is presented. It is consistent with a general formulation proposed to evaluate external costs in urban area. The innovative contributions are classified into five main categories: innovative vehicles, proximity stations or points, collaborative and cooperative urban logistics, optimization of transport management and routing, innovations in public policies and infrastructures. The new paradigm of smart logistics is based on the combination of these concepts and on the proposed innovations
Life Cycle Assessment in the Agri-Food Supply Chain: Fresh Versus Semi-Finished Based Production Process
Get PDFThe agri-food supply chain is responsible for high GHG emissions. In industrial food processing, there is potential for reducing environmental impacts. In the case of apricot jam, several practices for realizing the finished product can be adopted. If, on the one hand, the scientific literature provides detailed studies on the economic aspects of the existing practices, on the other hand, a comprehensive assessment of the most common production practices from an environmental perspective is not provided. Apricot jam production can be based on two different kinds of raw materials: fresh fruit and the so-called “semi-finished product”, which is obtained by treating fresh fruits with mechanical and thermal processes. The most extended shelf-life of the semi-finished product allows for the adoption of more flexible production practices, leading to increased production performance and ensuring more efficient transportation strategies. In environmental terms, the convenience of this approach compared to adopting fresh fruit is questionable. The aim of this paper is to compare the environmental impacts due to these two different production and transport practices of apricot jam. Consistent with this end, a Life Cycle Assessment methodology has been adopted to evaluate the environmental impact of each step in the apricot jam supply chain. Research results suggest that the use of fresh apricots in the production of jams has a lower environmental impact (about 50–65% without considering transport activities) than the use of semi-finished products, and that losses due to the short shelf-life of fresh fruit limits the transportation distance of the raw and fresh material, also depending on the transport mode adopted (in the range of 875–4450 km). This highlights the need to adopt more clean and sustainable practices in the current industrial food processes
Green strategies to reduce the environmental impact of jam production
No full textFood operations management is the most impactful driver of global environmental challenges, including global warming, climate change, water pollution and loss of biodiversity. According to recent studies, food production systems efficiency and food loss are leading causes of environmental degradation. Although many methodologies to assess the environmental impact of food production have already been investigated, there is an urgent need to provide environmental evaluations in the fruit sector focusing on the most widespread industrial production processes and their corresponding impact. In this context, the operations management in jam production represents one of the most critical issues. Generally, in the most common jam production systems, energy-intensive treatments, including chemical substances, are adopted to extend the shelf-life of the raw materials or finished products, allowing to increase the process performance in terms of production levelling, inventory management, and market policies. In many cases, this approach compromises the sustainability of treatments, reducing the corresponding environmental performance. This paper aims to analyze the most common processes for jam production, comparing their environmental performances and the effects of the related centralized/decentralized strategies to be adopted. The potential impact categories of each process phase have been assessed. Results led to identifying the jam production from fresh fruit by adopting a decentralized production strategy, the best option considering the environmental performance under production capacity constraints
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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