Sustainability-based review of urban freight models

This paper provides a review of models and decision support systems for urban freight transport (UFT). The originality of this study is that the analysis framework has been developed to outline the progress on UFT specifically related to the sustainability issue. Accordingly, contributions regarding UFT and addressing at least one factor of sustainability have been analysed by cross-referencing categories of models with impacts on sustainability. Results from this work are supposed to help enhance research concerning operations research (OR) for sustainable UFT by pointing out gaps that need to be closed and opportunities for future research. There is also an attempt to understand what is stopping researchers from including selected sustainability factors in the optimisation models. This paper also finally proposes some developments, not only in the OR field, that are preparatory for elaborating new models or improving the existing ones.