The Service Network Design Problem with Fleet and Emissions Managemen...

This research is inspired by the desire of shippers to reduce the emissions associated with their logistics operations and carriers to achieve their own profitability and sustainability targets while satisfying shipper expectations regarding transportation services. While hydrogen fuel cell and battery-electric vehicles present opportunities to reduce emissions, effectively integrating their use into operations given range limitations, recharging (refueling) times, and limited battery charging and hydrogen infrastructure requires careful planning. Further, reducing emissions requires accurately estimating emissions from operations. Critical to this estimation is a recognition that the emissions associated with energy production can vary from one region to another. This is also true with respect to the price of both energy and diesel fuel. We propose the Service Network Design Problem with Fleet and Emissions Management (SND-FEM). This problem considers fleet management decisions regarding how many vehicles of each type (diesel, electric, hydrogen) a carrier should acquire as well as in what regions they should operate. The impact of these fleet-level decisions on customer service is captured by explicitly modeling the routing of shipments and vehicles while recognizing the consumption of limited onboard resources (electrical energy, diesel fuel, hydrogen). Like the scheduled service network design problem (SSNDP), the SND-FEM ensures that a set of commodities are transported from their respective origins to their respective destinations. To do so, it ensures sufficient tractor capacity is routed to transport those commodities. Each type of tractor (diesel, battery-electric, hydrogen-electric) runs on and can store a limited amount of a given resource. The range of a tractor is determined by its onboard resource storage capacity and consumption rate for that resource. The model ensures that the movements of a tractor adhere to the range limitation of its type. The SND-FEM models the replenishment of resources by a vehicle as occurring at service nodes. These nodes may or may not also be terminals in the network wherein shipments are loaded and/or unloaded from vehicles.