An urban metro network-based method to evaluate carbon emission and distribution cost of express delivery

Abstract

A novel green delivery method for express delivery based on the urban metro network, referred to as Green metro express delivery (GMED), is presented. A multi-objective mathematical programming model is first proposed to maximize the search for the best transportation costs and lowest carbon emissions. To solve the GMED model e-ciently, a two-layer coding method is used to encode the path and the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) is adopted. Finally, a numerical experiment was conducted with Ningbo Metro Network as a case to prove the effectiveness and stability of NSGA-II in solving the GMED model. The result shows that: (a) Compared with the vehicle express delivery method (VED), GMED has lower carbon emissions and vehicle mileage. (b) For the same quantity of express delivery, the transportation costs of GMED and VED have their own advantages over different transportation distances. (c) For delivery distances with the same transportation cost, the lager the quantity of express delivery, the lower the transportation cost of GMED compared to VED.