Title: United Arab Emirates-Pakistan: the role of rail in green and economical intermodal and multimodal
Authors: Rizwan Shoukat; Xiaoqiang Zhang; Ayesha Saeed
Addresses: School of Transportation and Logistics, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China; National Engineering Laboratory of Integrated Transportation Big Data Application Technology, Chengdu, China; Lab of National United Engineering Laboratory of Integrated and Intelligent Transportation, No. 111, North Second Ring Road, Chengdu, China ' School of Transportation and Logistics, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China; National Engineering Laboratory of Integrated Transportation Big Data Application Technology, Chengdu, China; Lab of National United Engineering Laboratory of Integrated and Intelligent Transportation, No. 111, North Second Ring Road, Chengdu, China ' School of Transportation and Logistics, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China
Abstract: Multimodal freight transport has several advantages over other modes of transport and contributes to cost savings and reduced negative environmental impacts. We examined the multi-objective distribution network problem for the multimodal (road, rail, and sea) and intermodal (road and sea) freight transport sector of Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. The mixed-integer programming (MIP) model is used to formulate the problem of cost minimisation and CO2 emissions. Pakistan contributes significantly to regional air pollution as a result of its reliance on road transportation. We solved the MIP problem using the multi-objective bat algorithm (MOBA) and compared the MOBA with multi-objective particle swarm optimisation (MOPSO), and multi-objective non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (MO-NSGA-II) to analyse the performance of each algorithm. Pareto fronts assist decision makers in balancing cost and CO2 emissions in our study. The results confirm that considerable differences exist in terms of cost (25%) and CO2 emissions (66%) reductions.
Keywords: multimodal freight transport; MMFT; CO2 emission; regional air pollution; Pareto fronts; road-rail-sea.
DOI: 10.1504/IJSTL.2023.10048002
International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics, 2022 Vol.15 No.3/4, pp.382 - 406
Received: 16 Nov 2021
Accepted: 13 Apr 2022
Published online: 14 Nov 2022 *