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Vehicle routing problems for city logistics

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EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics

Abstract

This paper surveys the vehicle routing problems met in cities for good distribution. It applies the following methodology. First, it gives an overview of the literature devoted to vehicle route optimization in cities. Then, it classifies and analyses urban logistic flows. As a result, it identifies the principal scientific challenges that need to be addressed: time-dependency, multi-level and multi-trip organization of the distribution, dynamic information. Finally, it focuses on each one of these challenges, analyses the main difficulties they imply and how they are treated in the literature.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR—Agence Nationale de la Recherche) and is part of project MODUM—Mutualisation et Optimisation de la distribution Urbaine de Marchandises. We would like to thank two anonymous referees for their very insightful comments that helped improving a lot this paper.

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Cattaruzza, D., Absi, N., Feillet, D. et al. Vehicle routing problems for city logistics. EURO J Transp Logist 6, 51–79 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13676-014-0074-0

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