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In difficult geographical zones (mountain, intra-cities areas, etc.), many shippers, from small and medium enterprises to individuals, may demand delivery of different food products (fresh, refrigerated, frozen, etc.) in small quantities. On the other side, carrier companies wish to use their vehicles optimally. Taking into account the perishability constraints (short-shelflife, temperature limits, etc.) of the transported food products and environmental constraints (pollution, carbon impact) while consolidating multiple kinds of food products to use vehicles optimally is not achieved by current transportation planning solutions. The purpose of this paper is to present an interoperable solution of a marketplace, formed by shippers and carriers, dedicated to the schedule of food transport orders.

This transportation planning system named Interoperable-Pathfinder, Order, Vehicle, Environment and Supervisor (I-POVES) is an interoperable multi-agent system, based on the SCEP (supervisor, customer, environment and producer) model (Archimede and Coudert, 2001). Ontologies are developed to create the planning marketplace comprising demands and offers from different sources (multiple shippers and carriers).

A hierarchy ontology for food products. A transporter system ontology. A global ontology that contains all shared concepts used by local ontologies of both shippers and carriers. I-POVES an interoperable model, which facilitates collaboration between carriers and their shippers through its active agents.

I-POVES is tested on a case study from the TECCAS Poctefa project, comprising transport and food companies from both sides of the Pyrenees (France and Spain).

There has been much work in the literature on the delivery of products, but very few on the delivery of food products. Work related to delivery of food products focuses mostly on timely delivery for avoiding its wastage. In this paper, constraints related to food products and to environment (pollution and carbon impact) of transport resources are taken into account while planning the delivery.

The purpose of this paper is to develop propositions explaining the influence of individual goals and social preferences on human decision making in transport planning. The aim is to understand which individual goals and social preferences planners pursue and how these influence planners’ decisions.

Propositions are developed based on investigation of decision making of transport planners in a Dutch logistics service provider using multiple data collection methods.

The study shows how decision making of transport planners is motivated by individual goals as well as social preferences for reciprocity and group identity.

Further research including transaction data analysis is needed to triangulate findings and to strengthen conclusions. Propositions are developed to be tested in future research.

Results suggest that efforts to guide planners in their decision making should go beyond traditional (monetary) incentives and consider their individual goals and social preferences. Moreover, this study provides insight into why transport planners deviate from desired behaviour.

While individual decision making plays an essential role in operational planning, the factors influencing how individuals make operational planning decisions are not fully understood.

This paper analyzes two external costs often associated with port development, cost to fisheries from marine dredge disposal and damages from air pollution, using estimates of development and operation for a proposed (but since cancelled) container port as a case study. For dredge disposal, a bio-economic model was used to assess short- and long-term and indirect (joodweb) damages to fisheries from marine disposal of clean sediments. In the case of air pollution, estimates of annual activity levels and emission coefficients are used to estimate incremental annual emissions of three key pollutants (NOx, HC and CO) for trucks, trains, yard vehicles, and vessels. These estimates allow for phasing in of strict new air pollution regulations. For both external costs, sensitivity analyses are used to reflect uncertainty. Estimates of shadow values in year 2002 dollars amount from $0.094 per cubic yard to $0.169 per cubic yard of clean dredged material for the selected disposal site and from $0.0584 per mile (jor current control standards) to $ 0. 0023 per mile (after phasing in of new regulations) for air pollution from heavy trucks.

This study aims to analyze the development direction of train speed, density and weight in China.

The development of China's railway in the past 40 years can be divided into 3 stages. At the stage of potential tapping and capacity expansion, it is important to improve the train weight and density by upgrading the existing lines, and improving transportation capacity rapidly. At the stage of railway speed increase, the first priority is to increase train speed, reduce the travel time of passenger train, and synchronously take into account the increase of train density and weight. At the stage of developing high-speed railway, train speed, density and weight are co-developing on demand.

The train speed of high-speed railway will be 400 km h⁻¹, the interval time of train tracking will be 3 min, and the traffic density will be more than 190 pairs per day. The running speed of high-speed freight EMU will reach 200 km h⁻¹ and above. The maximum speed of passenger train on mixed passenger and freight railway can reach 200 km h⁻¹. The minimum interval time of train tracking can be compressed to 5 min. The freight train weight of 850 m series arrival-departure track railway can be increased to 4,500–5,000 t and that of 1,050 m series to 5,500–6,400 t. EMU trains should gradually replace ordinary passenger trains to improve the quality of railway passenger service. Small formation trains will operate more in intercity railway, suburban railway and short-distance passenger transportation.

The research can provide new connotations and requirements of railway train speed, density and weight in the new railway stage.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an original model and a solution procedure for solving jointly three main strategic fleet management problems (fleet composition, replacement and make-or-buy), taking into account interdependencies between them.

The three main strategic fleet management problems were analyzed in detail to identify interdependencies between them, mathematically modeled in terms of integer nonlinear programing (INLP) and solved using evolutionary based method of a solver compatible with a spreadsheet.

There are no optimization methods combining the analyzed problems, but it is possible to mathematically model them jointly and solve together using a solver compatible with a spreadsheet obtaining a solution/fleet management strategy answering the questions: Keep currently exploited vehicles in a fleet or remove them? If keep, how often to replace them? If remove then when? How many perspective/new vehicles, of what types, brand new or used ones and when should be put into a fleet? The relatively large scale instance of problem (50 vehicles) was solved based on a real-life data. The obtained results occurred to be better/cheaper by 10% than the two reference solutions – random and do-nothing ones.

The methodology of developing optimal fleet management strategy by solving jointly three main strategic fleet management problems is proposed allowing for the reduction of the fleet exploitation costs by adjusting fleet size, types of exploited vehicles and their exploitation periods.

The purpose of this paper is to present a quantitatively supported explanation of the intellectual development, the schools of thought and the sub-areas of the food cold chain (FCC) research to derive meaningful avenues for future research.

This study builds on bibliometric analysis and network analysis to systematically evaluate a sample of 1,189 FCC articles published over the past 25 years. The descriptive statistics and science mapping approaches using co-citation analysis were performed with VOSviewer software.

The findings reveal a state-of-the-art overview of the top contributing and influential countries, authors, institutions and articles in the area of FCC research. A co-citation analysis, coupled with content analysis of most co-cited articles, uncovered four underlying research streams including: application of RFID technologies; production and operation planning models; postharvest waste, causes of postharvest wastage and perishable inventory ordering polices and models; and critical issues in FCC. Current research streams, clusters and their sub-themes provided meaningful discussions and insights into key areas for future research in FCC.

This study might reshape practitioners’, researchers’ and policy-makers’ views on the multifaceted areas and themes in the FCC research field, to harness FCC’s benefits at both strategic and tactical level. Finally, the research findings offer a roadmap for additional research to yield more practical and modeling insights that are much needed to enrich the field.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework of green strategies as a combination of energy-efficiency measures and solutions towards environmental impact reduction for improving environmental sustainability at logistics sites. Such measures are examined by discussing the related impacts, motivations and barriers that could influence the measures' adoption. Starting from the framework, directions for future research in this field are outlined.

The proposed framework was developed starting from a systematic literature review (SLR) approach on 60 papers published from 2008 to 2022 in international peer-reviewed journals or conference proceedings.

The framework identifies six main areas of intervention (“green strategies”) towards green warehousing, namely Building, Utilities, Lighting, Material Handling and Automation, Materials and Operational Practices. For each strategy, specific energy-efficiency measures and solutions towards environmental impact reduction are further pinpointed. In most cases, “green-gold” measures emerge as the most appealing, entailing environmental and economic benefits at the same time. Finally, for each measure the relationship with the measures' primary impacts is discussed.

From an academic viewpoint, the framework fills a major gap in the scientific literature since, for the first time, this study elaborates the concept of green warehousing as a result of energy-efficiency measures and solutions towards environmental impact reduction. A classification of the main areas of intervention (“green strategies”) is proposed by adopting a holistic approach. From a managerial perspective, the paper addresses a compelling need of practitioners – e.g. logistics service providers (LSPs), manufacturers and retailers – for practices and solutions towards greener warehousing processes to increase energy efficiency and decrease the environmental impact of the practitioners' logistics facilities. In this sense, the proposed framework can provide valuable support for logistics managers that are about to approach the challenge of turning the managers' warehouses into greener nodes of the managers' supply chains.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how far technology and information enable, facilitate or support the planning and implementation decisions in humanitarian vaccine cold chains for vaccination campaigns. The authors specifically focus on three emerging technologies that have the potential to create more flexible conditions in the field, and identify the need to further explore the link between uncertainty, information and irreversibility.

The authors present a basic structure for the analysis of cold chain disruptions in terms of three distinct yet connected layers of deficient infrastructure and capacity, information gaps and failures in decision making. The authors then review three humanitarian technologies and their impact on vaccine campaigns along these layers. From there, a research agenda is developed to address research gaps this review brought forward.

Three critical research gaps in the areas of technology innovation for humanitarian vaccine cold chain management are presented. The authors argue that technology to improve capacity, information and decisions need to be aligned, and that the areas of uncertainty, information and irreversibility require further investigation to achieve this alignment. In this way, the paper contributes to setting the research agenda on vaccine cold chains and connects humanitarian logistics to technology, information management and decision making.

This paper presents the humanitarian vaccine cold chain problem from an original angle by illuminating the implications of technology and information on the decisions made during the planning and implementation phases of a vaccine campaign. The authors develop an agenda to provide researchers and humanitarians with a perspective to improve cold chain planning and implementation at the intersection of technology, information and decisions.

Emergency humanitarian medical cold chains (HMCCs) depend heavily on their supporting energy services due to end-to-end temperature requirements in volatile disaster situations. Most energy sources powering emergency HMCCs are fossil-based due to well established processes, regardless of their environmental impact. In response to the recent energy crisis and climate change, a solution to tackle this issue relies on renewable energy sources (RES), whose use has increased to promote climate resilient development. Nevertheless, RESs’ capacity to replace conventional energy services in emergency HMCCs remains poorly understood. This study aims to investigate opportunities for, and barriers to, increasing the use of RESs in emergency HMCCs, thereby enhancing their environmental sustainability.

Based on a review of academic and practice literature, interviews with expert practitioners on emergency HMCCs and sustainable energy, and case study examples, this research aimed to analytically generalise the phenomenon by investigating opportunities for, and barriers to, increasing the use of RESs in emergency HMCCs. The phenomenon is illustrated in a novel framework of typical HMCC, that forms a contextual basis for future research.

A conceptual framework of typical emergency HMCC shows energy-consuming sections where RES can best be increased. This research is put forth in four propositions to manage the opportunities and barriers of the transition.

This research is, to the best of the author’s knowledge, the first attempt to operationalise sustainability by linking energy with HMCCs’ logistical activities in complex emergency settings. The cross-findings from literature, example cases and interviews together demonstrate the need to increase the use of RES in HMCCs, and how to do it.

This study investigates how asset specificity, relational governance and firm adaptability relate with supply chain integration (SCI), considering selected food processing firms (FPFs) in Uganda.

This study applies a quantitative research methodology. This research draws on a sample of 103 FPFs that have been selected from a population of 345 FPFs located in Kampala district. Hypothesis testing was done using Smart PLS version 3.

Asset specificity has a significant positive relationship with SCI, and firm adaptability partially mediates this relationship. Also, there is a full mediation impact of firm adaptability on the relationship between relational governance and SCI.

This study focused on perceptual measures to get responses from managers on the level of integration with key suppliers and customers, yet firms deal with a number of suppliers and customers.

This study contributes to existing literature on SCI by applying the transaction cost theory. The study focuses on the influence of asset specificity, relational governance and firm adaptability on SCI in the food processing sector. Literature on relational governance in supply chain using the transaction cost theory remains scanty. Few studies have also focused on firm adaptability as a mediator in the FPS with specific focus on Uganda, yet the sector is highly faced with uncertain events. The uncertain events in the sector and in developing countries call for adaptive strategies. Additionally, this study is the first to use firm adaptability to mediate the influence of asset specificity and relational governance on SCI more so in a developing country like Uganda where the FPS is one of the most important in the economy.