Description

The urban distribution of goods (UDG) is an extremely important activity for urban systems: it is essential to maintain commercial and productive activity, as well as to supply the population. Thus, an efficient transport and distribution system has a very important weight in the competitiveness of an urban area and constitutes, in turn, a crucial element of the urban economy, both for the income it produces and for the levels of employment it generates and maintains. However, urban freight traffic has a great impact on mobility within cities, causing important social and environmental effects: the most notorious is its involvement in congestion and pollution in urban areas.

Despite the adverse effects, UDG's contribution to urban sustainability is clearly positive (thinking of the private vehicles that a delivery truck replaces in a store located in the urban center). Therefore, it is not about eliminating merchandise delivery vehicles from the city center, but about moving forward in the search for effective logistics solutions for urban distribution, as a key factor in ensuring sustainable growth from an economic, social and environmental point of view. The work carried out in this line of research includes the design and development of more efficient transport systems, including control devices, techniques to optimize the existing network and information systems], and also the design of methodologies to optimize UDG from a systemic point of view.