A platform to optimize urban deliveries with e-vans

Dealing with vehicles range and batteries recharge

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/1970-9870/9911
Keywords: Urban deliveries, Electric Vans, Decision Support System

Abstract

The paper reports the results of a research targeted to develop a Decision Support System (DSS) for planning and operation of urban deliveries carried out with electric vans. 
The research was included within the 2019-21 Research Program for the Electric System, coordinated by the Italian Ministry for the Ecological Transition, and has been performed by ENEA, the Italian Agency for Energy, New Technologies and Sustainable Development, and “La Sapienza” University of Rome. 
The new DSS is based on meta-heuristics algorithms capable to manage a generic set of goods to be delivered by means of a generic fleet of electric vans, with the objective of minimizing the overall cost of the daily operation. The algorithm considers all the physical constraints, including vehicles batteries capacity. It is assumed that fast recharges can be performed during the delivery tours. 
For the real-time operation, a monitoring system of the vehicle fleet, road network and recharge stations is assumed, based on IoT technologies, in order to detect possible unexpected events and manage them in the best way, according to the available resources time by time. 
The paper describes the DSS general architecture, the optimization algorithms and the recovery procedures and shows results for two testbeds. 

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Author Biographies

Maria Pia Valentini, ENEA - Italian Agency for Energy, New Technologies and Sustainable Development

Graduated in 1989 in Transport Engineering at the University of Roma “La Sapienza”, she joined ENEA in 1997 after professional experiences in major Engineering Companies and other Research Bodies. She manages research projects mainly focused on electric mobility, transport systems modelling, freight logistics, Public Transport and Intelligent Transport Systems as well as estimation of energy and environmental impacts of mobility. She also participates at various institutional activities for the definition of National Strategies for Sustainable Mobility, is member of the scientific board of TRAIN Consortium, devoted to R&D of technical innovation for Transport, is co-author of many scientific and disseminative papers and patented some software tools.

Filippo Carrese, La Sapienza - University of Rome

Ph.D in Transportation Engineering and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. His main research topic concerns Accessibility for Urban Freight Distribution with Electric Vehicles but is also involved in other research activities including: Cooperative Connected and Automated mobility, Demand modelling and Planning, Traffic Engineering and ITS, Big Data for transportation applications and Shared Autonomous Vehicles.

Chiara Colombaroni, La Sapienza - University of Rome

Chiara Colombaroni is an Assistant Professor in Transport System Engineering at DICEA Department of Civil, Constructional and Environmental Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome. Her research activities are addressed to transportation planning and transportation system modelling in particular to study traffic flow modelling, driver behaviour modelling, traveller information systems, road traffic control and network design. She carried out several studies about demand models and environmental impacts and she was involved  in several Research Activities for studies about Optimization and Simulation of Transport Systems. She was an assistant professor at online University Niccolò Cusano in Rome, teaching Transport Science and Economics and Technologies for Sustainable Transport. She participated to several conference as speaker and as organizer of National and International Conference.

Valentina Conti, ENEA - Italian Agency for Energy, New Technologies and Sustainable Development

 Graduated in 2002 in transport engineering at University of Roma Tre. She joined ENEA in 2006 as a researcher in the field of sustainability and energy efficiency of transport sector, after carrying out professional activities for various private companies and public bodies.
She focused on the analysis and development of software for the simulation of transport systems as well as on definition and monitoring of policies for sustainable mobility, both passenger and freight.
At ENEA, she collaborated in various research projects, in the preparatory studies for the provided National Transport Plan and in the Annual Report on Energy Efficiency (RAEE).

Matteo Corazza, ENEA - Italian Agency for Energy, New Technologies and Sustainable Development

Degree in Physics in 1998 and PHD in Geophysics in 2003, he is now researcher at ENEA, Casaccia, Rome, Italy. He worked at the University of Genoa, Italy, the University of Maryland, US, the Ligurian Regional Environment Agency (ARPAL) in Genoa, Italy, and at the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission in Ispra, Italy. His research activity is focused on Data Assimilation, Numerical Weather Prediction, Ensemble Forecasting, Inverse Modeling, Transportation, and Electric Mobility.

Maria Lelli, ENEA - Italian Agency for Energy, New Technologies and Sustainable Development

Graduated in 1999 in Physics, she joined ENEA in 2000. For ENEA she works in research projects, both European and national, on consumption and GHG emissions models development from transportation systems and integrated assessment of reduction policies scenarios. Her activity is focused mainly on energy and GHG impacts evaluation of electromobility diffusion. She also participates at institutional activities for defining the National Energy Efficiency Action Plans, monitoring the National Strategic Reference Framework and the Regional Energy Plans. She contributed for the Ministry of Transport to the elaboration of the Guide Lines for Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans.

Mostafa Mohammadi, La Sapienza - University of Rome

Mostafa is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. His main research topic includes city logistics (last mile, urban, etc.), traffic management, and multi-modal transportation. Methods include Operations Research methods, like integer programming, branch-and-price, and metaheuristics, Artificial Intelligence approaches, like reinforcement learning and other machine learning methods.

Silvia Orchi, ENEA - Italian Agency for Energy, New Technologies and Sustainable Development

Economic degree and Master course in Energy and Environmental Management. She conducts studies in the economic aspects of transport and sustainable mobility and she is expert on the sectoral institutional and regulatory framework. She performs cost/benefit analysis and economic evaluations of the negative externalities of transport, also applied to decision support systems, addressed to public administrators and/or transport companies.

Fernando Ortenzi, ENEA - Italian Agency for Energy, New Technologies and Sustainable Development

Fernando Ortenzi is a mechanical engineer (2003) and Ph.D in energetics (2008) ; works as a researcher at ENEA Research Centre in the Eco-friendly Vehicles Laboratory (DTE-PCU-STMA) from 2012 and as research fellow in Sapienza University of Rome from 2004. Author of more than 60 technical papers. he participated in many research projects on real word vehicles consumption and emissions, electric vehicles and charging infrastructure.

Research interests: Measurement and modeling of energy and emissions of vehicles; charging infrastructure, Fleet management of vehicles and trucks from OBD/CAN data; Alternative fuels for internal combustion engines.

Golman Rahmanifar, La Sapienza - University of Rome

Golman is a doctoral researcher in Infrastructure and Transportation Engineering at the Department of Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. Her expertise lies mainly in operation research and its applications in city-logistics and network design, supply chain management, smart cities and mobility management, static and dynamic traffic assignment to road networks, travel demand and route choice models.

Giuseppe Tomasino, ENEA - Italian Agency for Energy, New Technologies and Sustainable Development

He graduated with honors in April 2001 in Electronic Engineering at the University of Palermo with an experimental thesis entitled: "A software simulator for the navigation of robot fleets". Then he worked at the MPG Research Team of STMicroelettronics Company, like HDL Designer and CAD Engineer. From January 2006 he was System Engineer at ENEA, Trisaia Research Center. Here obtain the CISCO CCNA certification. Since August 2011 is Staff Engineer in ENEA. In this period, he deals with web applications and information systems for the energy certification of buildings, and design the “Information System for the Transmission of the Energy Performance Certificates of Buildings”. Recently he is involved in various projects in the field of  IoT systems, electric fleets navigation, Decision Support Systems and geo-referred Systems

Gaetano Fusco, La Sapienza - University of Rome

Gaetano Fusco is a Full Professor of Transport at the Faculty of Engineering of Sapienza University of Roma and Director of the Research Center of the Interdepartmental Research for the Transport and Logistics. His research activity, reported in about 100 papers published in the national and international scientific literature, has tackled numerous issues of transport systems engineering, such as demand and supply models, simulation models, traffic control, freight transport and logistics, with particular reference to Intelligent Transportation Systems.

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Published
2023-08-31
How to Cite
ValentiniM., CarreseF., ColombaroniC., ContiV., CorazzaM., LelliM., MohammadiM., OrchiS., OrtenziF., RahmanifarG., TomasinoG., & FuscoG. (2023). A platform to optimize urban deliveries with e-vans. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, 16(2), 403-423. https://doi.org/10.6093/1970-9870/9911
Issue
Vol 16 No 2 (2023): The city challenges and external agents. Methods, tools and best practices
Section
LUME (Land Use, Mobility and Environment)

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