Smart City-wide Package Distribution Using Crowdsourced Public Transportation Systems

The diversification of online retailers and the popularity of online shopping have stimulated the rapid development of the logistics industry.Although a large number of logistics and transportation have promoted the economic development and convenient service,express companies are still facing many challenges: 1)high logistics costs;2)insufficient logistics capacity in holidays,which leads to frequent "warehouse bursting" phenomenon;3)traffic congestion and environmental pollution(such as carbon emissions)caused by dedicated logistics vehicles.In this paper,we propose CPDCP: city-wide Package Distribution using Crowdsourced Public Transportation System.The idea is to use the underutilized capacity of a crowdsourced public transport system to transport packages to a neighborhood or street near their destination.This logistics transportation mode has four main advantages: 1)wide distribution coverage;2)huge amount of stable transport capacity;3)economically and environmentally friendliness;4)little impact on passenger experience quality.In this paper,by considering the final destination of the package and the available CPTS schedule information,we design a solution that uses the least amount of idle capacity of the crowd-sourced public transportation system to complete the package delivery task without affecting the passenger experience.To this end,this paper has carried out the following research:(1)Systematic analysis and summary of the existing green logistics modelWith the rise of online retails and logistics industry,the traditional logistics distribution model has been unable to meet the new requirements.Based on different design concepts and different transportation tools,researchers have designed various types of green logistics modes from different perspectives to realize environmental protection and efficient transportation.In this paper,the existing green logistics models are systematically sorted and classified,and typical models in each category are taken as examples to summarize the design goals,analyze the advantages and limitations,list typical challenges and solutions,and discuss the development prospects.(2)CPDCP of cross-city packagesIn the CPDCP model for cross-city packages,the parcel first arrives at the logistics distribution center of the destination city for the information analysis and processing.In order to simplify the allocation process and be conducive to a unified deployment,our model sets that all packages should be transported to the departure station of the chosen CPTS routes before further transmission.Specifically,a Passenger Transfer Model is designed to estimate the number of passengers on different trips,so as to obtain the available under-utilized capacity for package delivery.Based on the calculation of under-utilized capacity,two package loading schemes without affecting passenger experience are designed in this paper: Minimum Limitation Delivery method(MLD)and Adaptive Limitation Delivery method(ALD),which respectively utilize the minimum under-utilized capacity and all available under-utilized capacity for package distribution.(3)CPDCP of intra-city packagesFor intra-city packages,in order to reduce unnecessary transportation capacity,this paper assumes that the packages do not need to be transported to the departure station of the public transportation system but can be directly loaded at the adjacent stations.Specifically,considering the starting point and the final destination of the package,as well as the available CPTS schedule,we optimize the package delivery planning by determining the four states of any package at any time(wait,drive,wait again,and unload).In this paper,the transport scheme is modeled as an example of a multi-time multi-commodity flow problem and modeled as an integer linear programming problem.Then,we propose an efficient heuristic solution to this NP-hard problem.This paper also extends the scheme of a single CPTS route to the whole public transportation system.(4)Execute experiments for evaluating our modelsIn the CPDCP model for cross-city packages,we compared and evaluated the proposed MLD and ALD schemes in terms of resource occupancy of the public transport system and impact on passenger user experience(theoretical and experimental).In the CPDCP model for intra-city packages,we compared the performance of various package loading schemes in terms of package delivery time and package status distribution.The experimental results show that the proposed CPDCP schemes have a strong delivery capability,a low impact on passenger experience,and a high delivery success rate for package delivery.