An Agent-Based Approach to Evaluate Freight Consolidation Center Strategy for Last Mile Deliveries in Jaipur City, India

Abstract

Urban goods distribution has a vital role in city logistics and sustainability of transport in cities. Urban goods distribution in Indian cities is largely missing among local policymakers. City logistics solutions are complex and challenging due to consensus among the heterogeneous urban freight stakeholders across commodities. Freight strategies adopted in Indian cities are often neglected and applied without scientific investigations, thus needs a scientific evaluation of freight strategies to bring an acceptable solution to all freight stakeholders of the urban goods sector. Agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS) can flexibly represent a city logistics system to understand and predict policy measures for freight efficiency and externalities. This research paper develops an ABMS framework across commodities to assess the impacts of freight consolidation centres strategy on freight stakeholders for last-mile deliveries in Jaipur city in India. The hypothesis for the research study is assumed that urban freight consolidation space strategy has a similar impact across commodities for last-mile deliveries. Primary data for wholesalers, retailers and transport operators across commodities were collected with face-to-face pen and pencil survey. Goods traffic volume count and model counts from ABMS are used for model validation by the G.E.H. statistics method. ABMS model results confirm that freight consolidation centres strategy has not similar impacts across commodity distribution in last-mile deliveries of goods. The present research study attempts to demonstrate the utility of the ABMS modelling technique for assisting in rational decision making towards sustainable urban freight distribution in developing countries like India.