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 *

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