Sustainable freight transport in urban areasImpact assessment by system dynamics based freight transport models

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Uwe Clausen; Professor Dr.-Ing. Bert Leerkamp
• Subject Area: Traffic and Transport Systems, Intelligent and Automated Traffic ; Urbanism, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 241704476

The overarching objective of the research project is to develop a methodology to represent, assess and simulate urban freight transport. This methodology enables not only to perform temporarily punctual analyses, but rather long-term forecasts. So far no generally valid transport policy instrument is available to public authorities to efficiently control and plan freight transport. Therefore, measurements will be provided in this field and most importantly their future sustainability will be evaluated by the methodology.The research project aims at linking system dynamics with a macroscopic aggregate freight transport model on the one hand and on the other hand with a microscopic disaggregate freight transport model. The advantage of this approach is to link the forecast capability of the System Dynamics method with the detail resolution of transport simulation. In the complete system dynamics model the subsystems transport policy, logistics, production and society or consumer, which relate to one another in the whole system, will be analyses in detail. The dependencies and interrelationships between the individual subsystems will be characterized by selected parameters within the system dynamics model. Sustainable concepts will be summarized in a catalogue of measures. These transport policy measures will be tested und simulated in different scenarios. By linking up the system dynamics model with the freight transport models, the effect of measures, which were analyzed previously over the course of time, will be simulated on an infrastructural level with the freight transport models. In the process, the results of system dynamics will be transferred to the transport demand within the traffic services. Both sub-models exchange data, which are required for the next simulation step of the other model. This gives rise to an iterative optimizing process of the urban freight transport.Target of the optimization is a stable system, which establishes a sustainable compromise between traffic service and transport demand on the one hand and on the other hand between ecological, social and economic, interests.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants