This book contains chapters inspired by the proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on City Logistics which was held on June 14 to 16, 2017, in Phuket, Thailand. Urban freight transport has become an important issue in urban planning. There are many challenges and problems related to increasing levels of traffic congestion, environmental impacts, safety and security issues and energy conservation. In addition, freight carriers are expected to provide higher levels of service at lower costs. To address these complicated and difficult problems, numerous city logistics schemes have been proposed and implemented in several cities, including joint delivery systems with urban consolidation centers, advanced information systems, public freight terminals, off-hour delivery, freight demand management, time windows, access control to city center, road pricing and the regulation of load factors and parking. City logistics schemes are relatively new concepts that are aimed at increasing the efficiency of urban freight transport systems as well as reducing traffic congestion and energy consumption and impacts on the environment and safety. However, new modeling, evaluation and planning techniques are required to conduct in-depth investigations before city logistics schemes can be effectively deployed.

This book includes recent developments in the modeling, evaluation and planning of city logistics schemes. Since city logistics schemes have already been implemented in several cities, a review of the performance of these schemes is presented and discussed. The book also presents a description of emerging techniques for increasing practical applications of city logistics models and reducing social and environmental impacts of urban freight transport. Several chapters describe the application of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) which play a vital role in collecting data and providing a platform for managing urban freight transport. New dimensions of freight transport platforms using the IoT (Internet of Things) or Physical Internet are also discussed. A number of chapters in this book focus on public–private partnerships among stakeholders, which are important for promoting city logistics. Economic analyses using cost–benefit analyses relating to urban distribution in an e-commerce environment are discussed. Case studies that address frameworks for managing urban freight transport including legal, organizational and financial aspects are presented. Decision support systems are also important tools for making appropriate decisions based on correct data and scientific analyses. Chapters covering new areas of city logistics such as crowd logistics, zero emission urban delivery, co-modality and the use of electric vehicles and bicycles are included. New algorithms and applications of models to practical problems using vehicle routing and scheduling, location routing and multi-agent models are highlighted.

We believe that this book covers a wide range of important developments in city logistics throughout the world. It will help researchers, students and administrators to understand the current status of urban freight transport issues, models, evaluation methods and planning approaches. We hope that the ideas and perspectives contained in this book will encourage researchers and practitioners to create more efficient and environmentally friendly logistics systems for sustainable cities.

We would like to express our heartiest appreciation to all of the authors of the papers submitted to the conference for their contributions and to the members of organizing committee for their help in organizing the conference. Special thanks go to all of the reviewers of the papers submitted to the conference. A total of 61 papers were accepted for publication after peer review to make up the chapters in the three volumes of this book.

Professor Eiichi TANIGUCHI
Associate Professor Russell G. THOMPSON
March 2018