The significant growth in B2C e-commerce in the last decade increased the traffic and volume of parcels in last-mile delivery significantly. To mitigate the impact of the last-mile delivery service such as the increased traffic and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission, crowdshipping emerged as an innovation that utilise the travelling crowd as occasional courier to deliver parcels. The goal of this study is to analyse the potential impact of crowdshipping performed by private cars to the local vehicle mileage and its result to the CO2 emission. This is done by simulating the passenger and parcel delivery transportation activities in agent-based modelling platform using MASS-GT and MATSim. An integration framework to bridge MASS-GT and MATSim was formulated in this study to model the interaction between the passenger and urban freight transport. Several scenarios are formulated to analyse the impact of crowdshipping. The results show that the CO2 and passenger-kilometres savings in parcel delivery vans transportation is exceeded heavily by the increase in passenger transportation performed by cars. This results in a slight increase in passenger-kilometres travelled and CO2 emission caused by car-based crowdshipping, although the value is very small that could be considered insignificant. It was found that car-based crowdshipping won’t either improve or worsen the impact of the current last-mile delivery system. It could be concluded that crowdshipping will be better performed using a more sustainable transport mode instead.

To convey the energy coming from offshore wind-farms to the end-users, a network of offshore transmission platforms with sub-sea cables is in place, functioning as the supply chain for electricity. This research addresses the development of an optimization model, OptiFleet, which targets the problem of vessel fleet management to perform the transportation of crew and cargo to and from the platforms. OptiFleet provides strategic decision support to the Transmission System Operator on the optimal accommodation and transportation strategy. In particular the model aims to generate an optimum fleet size and mix, this is the number and the type of vessels in the fleet to support the platform maintenance campaigns.

As the margins for improvements in the current freight transport system become limited, researchers address more and more the importance of collaboration between the actors which is crucial for the implementation of new, more efficient transport concepts as synchromodality. In addition, rail is concerned as a sustainable mode of transport that can also achieve economies of scale due to its ability to haul large quantities of goods. This study investigates cooperation policies that affect actors’ behavior to better utilize the rail use and lead to a more efficient system. We propose an innovative approach that combines gaming, simulation and optimization as a mixed method to test and evaluate these policies. The port to hinterland freight transportation system in the range of Port of Rotterdam is used as a case study. First, gaming sessions are organized in order to observe actors’ behavior and collect data. The game that is used was initiated by Port of Rotterdam, especially to identify the problems in this system. Subsequently, by assessing the observed data, a simulation model is developed and different policy scenarios are simulated to quantify their performance. In addition, the optimization model is developed, which sets the upper bound for performance and used as a solid base for comparison between the policy alternatives. Finally, the explanation of the difference between the policies’ and the optimized performance can give an insight on what are the root causes of the inefficiency, what is the best allocation of the resources and where the solutions should be focused.