Urban Courier Delivery in a Smart City: The User Learning Process of Travel Costs Enhanced by Emerging Technologies

Francesco Russo and Antonio Comi ()
Additional contact information
Francesco Russo: Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Delle Infrastrutture e dell’Energia Sostenibile, Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria, Feo di Vito, 89100 Reggio Calabria, Italy
Antonio Comi: Department of Enterprise Engineering, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via del Politecnico 1, 00133 Rome, Italy

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 23, 1-12

Abstract: This paper surveys urban courier routing, pointing out the learning process of the generalized travel cost enhanced by using innovations related to the introduction of emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs, i.e., the internet of things, big data, block chain and artificial intelligence), considering a smart city. Couriers, when planning in advance or choosing the routes in real time for delivering to citizens as well as to business users (including retailers), need to consider both the driving and walking routes (i.e., from the delivery bay to the customers) to optimize their activities. A two-layer literature optimization model is recalled, and the main scientific people-centered challenges that need to be addressed under the light of emerging ICTs are identified and explored, which are the learning process of routing attributes, as well as the opportunity to book on-street delivery bays in advance or in real time. Then, after a literature review on modeling courier activities, a unitary formulation is presented that combines old and real-time network data. In addition, integration with new telematics solutions (i.e., delivery bay booking) is pointed out. Finally, discussions on innovations and cost optimization are presented.

Keywords: emerging ICT; city logistics; courier routes; smart city; user-centered solutions; delivery bay booking; last-mile delivering; urban delivery (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/23/16253/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/23/16253/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:23:p:16253-:d:1286813

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().