Shipper Agents and Interactions with Transport Markets
Final Report Abstract
Freight induced traffic on the road network results from economic and logistic activities of interacting agents. These agents also react to external influences, such as political measures. Agent based simulation lends itself to address this issue from a modeling perspective. Thus, the overall goal of the project was to simulate the demand for freight transport in an agent-based way. This was done by adding corresponding agent types to the MATSim transport simulation software, test the behavior of these agents and provide empirical foundations for agent’s decisions. In the project, MATSim was expanded to include agent types that map the supply and demand side of the freight transport market. These agents were endowed with the capability to draw generic decisions and interact with each other as well as with the vehicles on the street network. These generic capabilities were made explicit in several case studies where the agents drew decisions on the choice of transport chains, the choice of transport product offers and the planning of tours. In order to underpin agent behavior with reliable data, statistical analyses were performed on the topic of shipment size choice. There, the factors influencing the choice between different shipping size categories were analyzed using discrete choice models. To account for the heterogeneity that is inherent to freight transport demand, segments of decision makers with homogeneous behavior were delimited. Interactions of shippers, respective recipients and logistics service providers are of an economic nature. Therefore, markets under several settings were modeled. Before these interactions take place, shippers and recipients have to find each other. Such relationships usually cannot be observed and have thus be modeled. This was done by reverse-engineering them from empirical tour data.
Publications
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How Driving Multiple Tours Affects the Results of Last Mile Delivery Vehicle Routing Problems, The 8th International Workshop on Agent-based Mobility, Traffic and Transportation Models, April 29 - May 2, 2019, Leuven, Belgium
Martins-Turner, K. & Nagel, K.
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Modelling interactions between freight forwarders and recipients – an extension of the MATSim toolkit, in: 15th World Conference on Transport Research.
Matteis, T., Wisetjindawat, W. & Liedtke, G.
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A heuristic optimization approach to synthesizing the relationships between shippers and recipients in urban freight transport, The 12th International Conference on City Logistics 19th June – 21st June 2023 in Bordeaux, France
Zhang, L.
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A Microscopic Freight Transport Model for Urban Areas: A Case of Food Retail in Berlin, World Conference on Transport Research - WCTR 2023 Montreal 17-21 July 2023, currently under Review for Transportation Research Records
Zhang, L., Matteis & T. Liedtke, G.
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Agent-based solving of the 2-echelon Vehicle Routing Problem, World Conference on Transport Research - WCTR 2023 Montreal 17-21 July 2023
Martins-Turner, K. & Nagel, K.
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Extension of an agent-based simulation for the optimized allocation of freight requests to differently structured supply chains, The 13th International Workshop on Agent-based Mobility, Traffic and Transportation Models, Methodologies and Applications (ABMTrans 2024) April 23-25, 2024, Hasselt, Belgium
Richter, N., Martins-Turner, K. & Nagel, K.
