Title: Impact of optimisation on idle time's fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions in urban transportation

Authors: Chaher Alzaman

Addresses: Department of Supply Chain and Business Technology Management, John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, H3H 0A1, Canada

Abstract: There is ample innovation ensuing in the domain of automated transport and vehicle information and communication systems. This is especially the case in urban transport where idle driving is a significant factor. This work examines the benefits, of reducing idle driving, to be achieved if the ability of routing vehicles (or advising drivers of optimal routes) is acquired via the use of real-time information. This work approximates this real-time environment by an optimal network. The goal of this work is to assess the impact of optimisation on a given supply chain transportation network by contrasting optimal solutions to non-optimal solutions. The optimal solutions would be the result of mathematically programming a given supply chain network and then comparing it to the null case. The overall model is probabilistic one, where statistical distributions are used to generate numerous instances. The outcome of the work would be the presentation of numerical values that emphasise how much an optimal system would render in terms fuel consumption and CO₂ emission avoidances.

Keywords: sustainable supply chains; supply chain modelling; supply networks; network design; simulation; optimisation; fuel consumption; CO2; carbon dioxide; carbon emissions; urban transport; idle time; automated vehicle systems; supply chain management; SCM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBPSCM.2016.077167

International Journal of Business Performance and Supply Chain Modelling, 2016 Vol.8 No.2, pp.157 - 179

Received: 19 Apr 2014
Accepted: 27 Feb 2015
Published online: 22 Jun 2016 *

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