Green intermodal freight transportation: bi-objective modelling and analysis

Efficient planning of freight transportation requires a comprehensive look at wide range of factors in the operation and management of any transportation mode to achieve safe, fast, and environmentally suitable movement of goods. In this regard, a combination of transportation modes offers flexible and environmentally friendly alternatives to transport high volumes of goods over long distances. In order to reflect the advantages of each transportation mode, it is the challenge to develop models and algorithms in Transport Management System software packages. This paper discusses the principles of green logistics required in designing such models and algorithms which truly represent multiple modes and their characteristics. Thus, this research provides a unique practical contribution to green logistics literature by advancing our understanding of the multi-objective planning in intermodal freight transportation. Analysis based on a case study from hinterland intermodal transportation in Europe is therefore intended to make contributions to the literature about the potential benefits from combining economic and environmental criteria in transportation planning. An insight derived from the experiments conducted shows that there is no need to greatly compromise on transportation costs in order to achieve a significant reduction in carbon-related emissions.     

Construction,Properties, and Analysis of Group-Orthogonal Supersaturated Designs

Abstract

In this article, we propose a new method for constructing supersaturated designs that is based on the Kronecker product of two carefully chosen matrices. The construction method leads to a partitioning of the factors of the design such that the factors within a group are correlated to the others within the same group, but are orthogonal to any factor in any other group. We refer to the resulting designs as group-orthogonal supersaturated designs. We leverage this group structure to obtain an unbiased estimate of the error variance, and to develop an effective, design-based model selection procedure. Simulation results show that the use of these designs, in conjunction with our model selection procedure enables the identification of larger numbers of active main effects than have previously been reported for supersaturated designs. The designs can also be used in group screening; however, unlike previous group-screening procedures, with our designs, main effects in a group are not confounded. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.