Introducing CRISTAL: A model of collaborative, informed, strategic trade agents with logistics

Abstract

Freight transportation has major economic, energy, and sustainability impacts. As a result, forecasting tools for analyzing policy scenarios are critical. However, existing freight transportation modeling tools have major gaps, especially in agent representation, prediction of fleet and distribution center control, and strategic alignment of agent decisions. We address these gaps by developing a new architecture for freight transportation modeling called CRISTAL: Collaborative, Informed, Strategic Trade Agents with Logistics. CRISTAL is an agent-based model that includes both firms and establishments (establishments are members of firms). Agents collaborate to form supply chain partnerships in trade and logistics. An Effect of Information captures information sharing in the supply chain, providing a mechanism to operationalize the push–pull boundary, which occurs at the customer-order decoupling point. Agents form strategies then align subsequent decisions with these strategies. Our CRISTAL implementation is multi-resolution, with urban freight linked to national and global supply chains. It is integrated with passenger activity, including household e-commerce use and passenger traffic. The framework has been applied to study e-commerce and truck traffic. This paper summarizes the conceptual model, its initial implementation, and applications to date.