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Long haul freight transport imposes huge negative environmental externalities on society. Although these can never be entirely eliminated, they can be reduced. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse some of the many mitigating measures, or interventions, that can be used.

The approach used in this chapter is to review the literature and provide an overview of the main theoretical and practical mitigation measures available to transport operators.

There are literally thousands of possible mitigation measures and combinations that can be used by operators to reduce their environmental footprint. Each of these measures warrants a separate chapter. This chapter can only present an overview of the principle available measures. Although some mainland European examples are used, it is acknowledged that the examples used are somewhat skewed towards the United Kingdom.

The value of the chapter is in bringing together some of the many measures and approaches that can be used to reduce the environmental externalities of long haul freight transport. Much of the information on such interventions is based on industrial and EU project sources rather than purely academic research and so is less likely to be found in academic journals.

Logistics as a sector has a key role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and in reducing the dependency of our economy on non-renewable energy sources. The challenges are enormous: by 2050 the sector needs to have achieved about 50% lower fossil fuel use and CO₂ emissions. If freight volumes grow according to expectations, this requires over 70% less CO₂ emissions per unit of transport. This chapter explores the options for reducing CO₂ emissions from freight transport and their reduction potential, and analyses whether the logistic sector would be likely to achieve the required reduction based on its intrinsic drive for cost reduction alone.

In this conceptual chapter we identify options for sustainable logistics and discuss the necessary economic conditions for their deployment using a simple cost/benefit analysis framework. We distinguish between three regimes of measures for improving sustainability: efficiency measures with net negative costs (‘low hanging fruit’), cost-neutral measures and measures that allow to reach societal targets at net positive costs. Policy measures are discussed that may help the sector to implement cost-effective greenhouse gas abatement measures that, in the absence of incentives, go beyond the point of lowest cost from an end user perspective.

Sufficient energy saving options are available to be implemented in the short to medium term, which can lead to operational cost savings with a short return on investments period. The potential contribution of the logistics sector to sustainability is larger, however, as logistics can make large steps ahead in sustainability with cost neutrality or with small cost increases. The full potential has been underrated by many stakeholders and should be explored further.

Efficiency measures are a necessary but insufficient condition for sustainable logistics. The industry will need to go beyond cost saving measures, or even cost-neutral measures to reach the long-term energy saving and emission reduction targets for freight transport. We provide a systematic presentation of these options and discuss the additional necessary measures.

Purpose – To examine the cost-effectiveness of UK government policy with respect to the mitigation of carbon emissions from the transport sector.

Methodology/approach – Existing policy as set out by the Department for Transport in Low Carbon Transport: A Greener Future is examined. This document elaborates a Low Carbon Transport Strategy intended to achieve annual emissions savings of 17.7 MtCO2 by 2020. A wide range of policy areas where further action could be taken to reduce carbon emissions are examined and their cost-effectiveness considered.

Findings – Measures that influence behaviour including smarter choices, eco-driving across modes, freight best practice and modest price increases are highly cost-effective. More cost-effective routes to saving 17.7 MtCO2 are identified, as are further cost-effective savings.

Originality/value – It appears that government targets could be delivered and indeed exceeded at lower cost than the Low Carbon Transport Strategy. However, policy development is influenced by a wide range of factors which help to explain why cost-effective measures are not always fully exploited.

Lockheed Martin has been a premier builder and developer of manned aircraft and fighter jets since 1909. Since then, aircraft design has drastically evolved in many areas including the evolution of manual linkages to fly-by-wire systems, and mechanical gauges to glass cockpits. Lockheed Martin's knowledge of manned aircraft has produced a variety of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) based on size/wingspan, ranging from a micro-UAV (MicroStar) to a hand-launched UAV (Desert Hawk) and up to larger platforms such as the DarkStar. Their control systems vary anywhere between remotely piloted to fully autonomous systems. Remotely piloted control is equivalent to full human involvement with an operator controlling all the decisions of the aircraft. Similarly, fully autonomous operations describe a situation that has the human having minimal contact with the platform. Flight path control relies on a set of waypoints for the vehicle to fly through. This is the most common mode of UAV navigation, and GPS has made this form of navigation practical.

This chapter provides an overview of the Department of Defense (DoD) laboratory structure to help equipment designers, modelers, and manufacturers determine where research, testing programs, or relevant findings can be found. The chapter includes a discussion of the performance measures and metrics typically used in DoD laboratories and concludes by considering the current state-of-the-art as well as the state-of-the-possible for human performance measurement.