Investigating the Factors Affecting the Deployment of Intelligent Urban Freight and Freight Transportation Systems Based on Sustainable Development Criteria

The growing population in cities and the increasing need for goods and services, has increased the traffic of freight vehicles, and on the other hand, a large part of the intra-city freight transportation network is done by various vehicles, which disregarding it causes irregularities in urban transportation, car accidents and events, psychological problems and insecurity of citizens, air pollution and pollutants increase, high fuel consumption, congestion and delay in the road network and dozens of other cases. Although the intra-city freight transportation fleet comprises only 20 percent of the vehicles traveling within the urban network, it has allocated 40 percent of emission of pollutants and noise pollution, and 35 percent of accidents to itself. One of the solutions to manage and promote the quality level of freight and goods transportation system is to use smart tools and systems in freight and goods transportation system. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to find the best solution to smarten the intra-city freight and goods transportation according to the criteria of sustainable development.

The research method has been conducted based on 7 stages of multi-actor multi-criteria analysis. Using library study and interview, at first the methods of smartening intra-city freight transportation and stakeholder groups were identified, then the criteria of sustainable development related to each of the stakeholder groups and related to smartening intra-city freight transportation were determined. After specifying which group each criterion belongs to, the weight of each criterion was determined for each group using the method of Analytical Hierarchy Process(AHP). For this purpose, a pairwise comparison questionnaire was designed for each group separately and distributed among the participants. The weight of each criterion was determined as a percentage, which indicates the importance that the stakeholder groups have attributed to these goals. After determining the weight of the criteria, a questionnaire was designed and distributed again to measure the impact ratio of each of the solutions on each of the criteria. This questionnaire is also of pairwise comparison type and has been analyzed by AHP method. In this research, by consulting with experts and elites, the weight of all groups was considered the same. The average of desirability ratio of each method from the perspective of stakeholder groups was also determined, which provides an overview of the perspective of all stakeholder groups. After specifying how much desirability each solution has in the view of each stakeholder group, this issue was addressed that what is the best solution to smarten intra-city freight transportation, so that by using it the current transportation system can also be improved, and can attract the satisfaction of all stakeholder groups as well. For this purpose, multi-actor multi-criteria analysis method was used. By averaging the percentage of desirability ratio of the proposed solutions among various groups, the most desirable method for smartening freight and goods transportation was specified.

In this research, four solutions have been introduced for smartening the intra-city freight and goods transportation, which are: 1- smartening urban roads, 2- smartening freight vehicles, 3- smartening warehouses, 4- designing mobile application for ordering freight vehicles. In the next step, individuals were classified into four groups under the title of stakeholder groups, which are: 1- City managers and officials, including mayors, transportation deputies, officials of the Freight and Passenger Transportation Organization, and officials of the Freight Transportation Terminals Organization, 2 - Freight and goods transportation operators, including freight companies and drivers of freight vehicles, 3- Goods consignors, including manufacturers, wholesalers and warehousemen, and 4- Goods recipients, including retailers. The sustainable development criteria were divided into four sections according to the goals and views of stakeholder groups in relation to smartening freight transportation, in a way that it was specified to which group each criterion belongs. Thus, both the goals and views of the public sector and the goals and views of the private sector were examined. Based on the analysis of data collected from the questionnaires, it was specified that the most important criterion according to the public sector (city managers and officials) is traffic management, while the criterion of traffic considerations has never been located in the first priorities of the private sector (senders, receivers and operators of transportation). Based on the one-actor analysis, the application design solution has the highest desirability from the point of view of senders and transportation operators, and from the point of view of city managers and officials, it is in the second place with a slight difference compared to smartening city roads. But from the point of view of the recipients of goods, smartening freight vehicles has allocated the highest desirability to itself. Based on the multi-actor multi-criteria analysis method, application design has generally been introduced as the most desirable method for smartening freight and goods transportation. This method has been at priority not just from the point of view of freight recipients and has been able to attract the view of other stakeholder groups to itself. The next criterion is smartening freight vehicles, which has the highest desirability from the point of view of freight recipients and is in the fourth rank in the view of city managers and officials. Then there is the criterion of smartening urban roads, which has the highest desirability from the point of view of city managers and officials. Finally, there is the criterion of smartening warehouses, which has been able to achieve relative desirability only from the point of view of freight transportation operators.

In this research, by measuring the importance ratio of criteria from the viewpoint of all stakeholder groups and comparing these views with each other, it was specified that there is a disagreement between the private sector (senders and recipients of goods and transportation operators) and the public sector (city managers and officials). From the perspective of the private sector, traffic considerations have the least importance compared to other criteria, while traffic management is the most important criterion from the perspective of the public sector. This disagreement has also been observable in choosing the best solution.