Fulfilment of last-mile urban logistics for sustainable and inclusive smart cities: a case study conducted in Portugal

ABSTRACT

While industry tends towards mass personalisation and instant deliveries, the last mile of urban logistics is being challenged to decrease the number of vehicles in circulation and the distances they travel in city centres. The COVID-19 pandemic helped expose the inefficiency of cities in fulfilling citizens’ real-time needs. Moreover, the first aim of this paper is to understand the barriers which policymakers face in providing a personalised response to citizens’ needs and the second to ascertain how they can proactively serve their communities. In line with these concerns, empirical evidence was collected through a questionnaire to Portuguese policymakers, and the results were discussed in a focus group with experts. The results suggest a lack of tools to enable real-time visualisation and study of scenarios for implementing and organising means of delivery and storage. Moreover, although policymakers feel confident in their capacity to manage the last mile, they would struggle to operate autonomously. Therefore, this paper conceptualises an initial algorithm based on the dynamic collaboration of stakeholders and sharing of resources to guarantee fulfilment of citizens’ necessities. Furthermore, future discussions shall emerge about the relationships and technical standards between stakeholders to provide the necessary logistical means for city management and operations.

KEYWORDS:

• Real-time fulfilment
• instant deliveries
• stakeholders collaboration
• resources sharing
• city management

Data availability

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [grant numbers:UIDB/00127/2020,UIDB/04058/2020]; The present work was developed in the scope of project SOLFI - Urban logistics optimization system with integrated freight and passenger flows [gant number: POCI-01-0247-FEDER-039870], co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) through COMPETE 2020 (Operational Program for Competitiveness and Internationalization).