Supply Chain Management Journal Cloudification of urban logistics Florin NEMŢANU Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania Joern SCHLINGENSIEPEN University of Applied Sciences, Ingolstadt, Germany Dorin BURETEA Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania Email: [email protected]

Abstract Urban logistics has now a new challenge in terms of barriers and access in urban areas. For this reason, the implementation of e-solutions based on ICT and ITS technologies is, at this moment, one of the most important way to solve the problems of logistics. ICT and ITS are, both, based on computer technologies and they are ready to be implemented based on cloud computing solutions (cloudification of this domain). A model of cloudification of logistics is the first step to understand the new paradigm and to move forward the development of new systems. Cloud based solutions for logistics are presented and a reference model as well as the architecture of the system are defined. Keywords: cloud computing, urban logistics, ITS, smart mobility, smart city 1. Introduction The urban environment is one of the most challenging part of the human society and the transition to a new smart approach is needed. The concept Smart City has an important impact on the urban system itself but also on city‟s inhabitants. The transition has to be design to integrate all urban components and to ensure the minimum level of acceptance of its citizens. Smart city generally refers to the search and identification of intelligent solutions which allow modern cities to enhance the quality of the services provided to citizens. (European Smart Cities project, 2015) In terms of logistics this means there is a need for personalized solutions, fulfilling the personal needs of smart city‟s inhabitants and not only a

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predefined optimum, like transaction time and cost.

minimal

The role of transport systems is rising these days not only due the vital role as main support system for mobility of people and goods but also due the negative impact of the environment and human society. For this reason, actual effort of the experts is to create new paradigms in this domain. Under the umbrella of the urban transport system, the development of urban logistics has to be focused on two main issues: mobility as a service (MaaS) and the application of ITS for urban areas. The European Logistics Association has defined logistics as follows: "The organization, planning, control and executing of goods flow from development and purchasing, through production and distribution, to the final customer in order to satisfy the requirements of the market at minimum

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Supply Chain Management Journal costs and minimum capital use.” (European Logistics Association, 2015) and another suggestive definition is "Logistics means having the right thing, at the right place, at the right time." (Sudalaimuthu & Anthony, 2009) The application of electronics, IT and communication technologies together with existing traffic and transport knowledge is defined as intelligent transport systems and their objectives are to increase the efficiency of transport activities and to reduce and minimise the negative effect, especially pollution. An important component of the IT domain which could be implemented in urban logistic is cloud computing. Cloud computing is defined by NIST (The National Institute of Standards and Technology) as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction”. The logistics designed, developed and operated based on cloud computing resources is defined as cloudification of logistics, and for urban application, the new concept cloudification of urban logistics is also defined. Information services in transport systems (traveller information services) are more available for cloudification than other services and activities; they are more oriented one information exchange and the information could be simple represented using computers and IT solutions (Nemtanu, et al., 2013). The European model of smart cities based on 6 components can be consider as a start point in terms of analysing the urban area in a smart manner and it could be used as a tool to develop architectures and systems for a smart urban areas. In a smart city every sub-system and component of the urban system has to be designed and developed in a smart

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Figure 1. European Model of Smart cities: 6 components

Smart mobility

Smart governance

Smart people

Smart city

Smart economy

Smart living

Smart environment

manner based elements:

on

the

following

- S – sustainable (based on real and sustainable needs and environmental oriented), - M – makeable (not an utopia, based on existing technologies), - A – affordable (not expansive, accessible in terms of money), - R - reliable (it could be used for many years), - T - time oriented (it could be happened at this time). Smart Mobility is one of the most important and vital component of the smart city in terms of facilitating the movement of people and goods in urban area and in terms of protecting the natural environment. Smart urban mobility of people and goods means the mobility done in a sustainable, environmental friendly, human friendly and smart city oriented way having as main objectives the achievement of SMART elements of the city. The approach of the urban logistics, in terms of aligned with SMART elements of the city, reveals the following aspects of this particular logistics: - Atomicity – various transport vehicles like busses, trucks and vans with

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Supply Chain Management Journal different (size, capacity, fuel consumption, environmental impact etc.) - Short distances and limited time for turn overs - Traffic issues – limited access to roads, tracks and logistic areas / parkin places depending on day of the week and time of day. - Pollution – depending on type of vehicle the emission of Co2, Nox and Noise varies, especially in densely populated areas this should be minimal - Infrastructure related issues like capacity limitation, speed limitations, lack of information caused by a lack of sensors, etc. These aspects are influencing the structure of the urban transport system and the architecture of the ITS and smart systems in urban area.

2. The performance of urban logistics Urban logistics as other human activities has to be measured and a set of key performance indicators is needed in terms of evaluating the effect of this activity. The smart technologies and approaches applied for urban logistics have to increase the effect of urban logistics and base on this set of KPIs the final mark has to be better than previous one. A list of new methods to improve the efficiency of urban logistics is proposed and these methods are susceptible to be implemented based on smart and cloud oriented technologies: - Smart approach vs. classic approach – this smart approach could be defined as a new way to organise and operate urban logistics having as objectives customer satisfaction. - Just in time vs. reduction of time – the classical approach of doing urban

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logistics is to increase the efficiency through the reduction of time needed to transport goods from a the point of expedition to the point of destination. The new approach is focused on delivering the goods just in time not to save transport time. - Make the best use of resources vs. saving money – saving money is an important target for every business on short time approach but, the most important thing is to use in better conditions the amount of resources you have. - Increase the customers‟ satisfaction vs. adding new values – the classical approach was oriented on new values added for every activity involved in urban logistics (this is characteristic for every human activity) but, now, it is more important to focus the activity on customer satisfaction as part of a global satisfaction for a product or a service. All these methods ask for cloudification of transportation services. Especially the last point expresses there is a need for personalisation of services in a way the usage is not only optimised in one or two dimension like time and costs like today. But in a way the personal needs of the users are satisfied. In order to achieve this a cloudification in a sense the choosing of the proper service can be fully automated is needed. Based on this list of efficiency improving methods a set of KPIs is proposed: - Time of delivery - Time of providing information about goods - Time of providing information about logistics‟ processes - Reduction of cost – for processing and sending information between different logistics‟ participants and stakeholders - Considering the personal needs of customer

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Supply Chain Management Journal - Increasing the satisfaction of the client – this is an aggregate KPI based on previous KPIs.

Urban logistics is the domain of logistics with a numerous challenges in terms of volumes, times, cost and environmental impact. For this reason a solution is to design and install ICT and electronics systems which are able to provide logistics services.

This list of KPIs is monitoring and measuring by the urban logistics ICT support system (and this support system could be designed and built based on cloud technologies and solutions). The List shows the main tasks while introducing the proposed cloudified ITS: Making the classical control and monitoring functions real-time capable and introducing a mechanism allowing to measure the consideration of personal needs.

The ICT system designed as support for urban logistics has to be part of the urban ICT support system which is mainly the supporting system for a smart city. The functional architecture of the ICT for urban logistics is, in fact a sub-architecture of a global urban ICT system and this architecture could be developed using FRAME architecture as a model. (FRAME Consortium, 2015)

The role of ICT and electronics technologies, as well as the cloud technologies, is to increase the efficiency in terms of manipulation of logistics‟ information but, also the role is to provide a tool to monitor and to control the processes involved in the logistics activity.



 

3. ICT for urban logistics



The definition – smart and intelligent support for urban logistics Architecture – part of the smart city architecture Technologies – cloud computing, big data, data mining and IoT Best practices – Project CO-

Figure 2. Multilayer structure of the ICT support system for urban mobility MaaS

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) – urban logistics

APaaS

Application layer PaaS

Processing layer CaaS

NaaS

Communication layer

Network of sensors

Command devices

Transport infrastructure, travellers, drivers, operators and vehicles

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Supply Chain Management Journal GISTICS deploys cooperative ITS services for logistics / Project ECOLOGISTICS is about ICT driven visibility for efficient and sustainable logistics A FRAME solution was provided by COGISTICS project in terms of functional and physical viewpoints (as part of the architecture) and the main results of the project are focused on five services: Intelligent Truck Parking and Delivery Areas Management, Cargo Transport Optimisation, CO2 Footprint Monitoring and Estimation, Priority and Speed Advice and Eco Drive Support. All these services show that behind the classical approach of logistics there are many other services which will be provided by the new logistics systems based on the customers‟ needs. (CO-GISTICS Consortium, 2015) The development of a smart system for a smart city has to be focused on collection of various data and information from the natural and artificial urban environment. This objective could be done based on a sensor network and this layer of sensing is defined as Sensor as a Service (SaaS). The network of sensors is designed as an independent system which is able to provide sensing services for other systems and services. It is proposed a multilayer system with a full independence between layers and every layer will provide specific service to an upside layer. 4. New paradigm – using cloudification to personalise the mobility The progress of technical solutions pushes a pressure on transforming the logistics domain as well as the services and the systems which are able to support this activity. Urban area is more restrictive and the barriers in doing logistics in urban area are the main forces which promoted the new paradigms and technologies.

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The main trend is to shift from travel or transport to mobility and the focus is on mobility as a service for goods and people. This objective can be done with a new approach of mobility and logistics and based of new technologies and ITS.

Figure 3. Intelligent devices supporting mobility

Characteristics Beside the cloudification of know functions the second challenge is developing a way to measure personalize benefit while respecting the personal need of the user. We enhance our former work (Schlingensiepen, et al., 2013), (Schlingensiepen, et al., 2016), (Schlingensiepen, et al., 2015) and (Schlingensiepen, et al., 2015) where we enrich data from the field to provide better support for disabled people and expand it to a universal solution. The main approach is the definition of characteristics of infrastructure (transport vehicles, links, stations/hubs, and lines), the users (travellers, dispatchers/distributors, receiver, and sender) and society represented by local authorities and overarching societal goals given by laws, regulations, directives and implementing regulations. To allow describing the characteristics of infrastructure and users an extendable attribution system is needed. There are five kind of entities that can be described by attributes, while the attribute value may vary depending on the time of day, the day of week or holidays:

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Supply Chain Management Journal Entity User: Persons resp. Roles (e.g. the procurement manager of a warehouse) have different needs and preferences that can be expressed by attributes assigned to an entity user representing this actor. Users have Tolerance settings describing the user‟s tolerance to route changes while traveling, idle time along the trip, crowded areas, noisy surroundings, visual contact with other people, user‟s tolerance to delays in delivery or pickup, the setting of the user to minimize the environmental impacts and others. Travel movement settings describing the user‟s motoric capabilities which includes the walking speed and endurance as well as the ability to take steps, use escalators or elevators. This includes also the demand of the user to get a free seat or special places at stations or within transport vehicles. Consumer settings describing the user‟s needs on punctuality, energy saving or cost saving. Entity Transport Mode Different transport modes or types of vehicles of the same mode have different attributes describing the way a special type of vehicle can be used, e.g. a low floor bus can be used by wheelchair users, while a common bus cannot be used. Manufactured goods can be transported in vans but not in waste trucks, etc. Entity Vehicle Beside the general attributes given by transport mode and

type of vehicle different vehicles have different attributes describing the way a particular vehicle can be used. Some buses may have identification support, while others don't. Some transporters may do real time location reporting, while others don‟t. Entity Node Stations and Hubs are the nodes in the network having different attributes describing the way they can be used for start and end of travel and transport or during changing vehicles resp. freight handling. In terms of personalized transport planning the most important attributes describing a station are steps, daylight, security and load and for describing a freight hub its throughput, compatibility, special handling equipment. Figure 4. A new approach and human machine interface

Entity Links - Links between the nodes are the traffic/transport lines and streets used during transport. In terms of

Table 1. Normalized values for attributes

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Value

User

Infrastructure Element

-8

Try to avoid

Very hard to use

-4 -2 0 2 4 8 1000

Strong do not like Do not like No special need Nice to have Recommended Strongly recommended Hard need

Hard to use Inconvenient to use No special service Provide service Special facilities to provide Perfect -/-

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Supply Chain Management Journal patterns for people.

personalized transport planning the most important attributes describing a link are the load, security, costs and speed. While costs and speed are usual attributes in route planning, the load and security has to be added to meet user‟s requirements (see above).

Dimensions and personal PKI To allow real time creation of PKI and find suitable transport solutions system to overlay the speed and cost optimal logistic management is needed. This overlay implements the described PKI Considering the personal needs of customer and allows the service selection mechanism to compare different ways in performing transport. To calculate this weighted efforts each infrastructure element used in a transport route is loaded by a user specific penalty summand (e.g. stations) or a user specific penalty factor (e.g. links, vehicle use). In reality not all attributes for stations and users are available at run time since the data quality might be poor. Therefore the system has to be able to perform flexible calculation based on the available information, therefore all attributes are normalized and ordered in dimensions. e.g. the need of a user for an elevator instead of stairs and the existence of an elevator in a station are the same dimension. Inside a dimension the attribute values are normalized, like shown in table 1.

To allow easier management of attribution of entities a class system is needed, it consists of: Persona describing a stereotypical person user which is similar to real passengers (Costa, 2011) and are constructed with different behaviours, profiles and objectives. A persona does not correspond to a real person, but represents a typical user like pupil, pensioner, worker, which is composed of different features and behaviour. Role describing a stereotypical user fulfilling a role in an organisation, roles also contains a default set of behaviours, profiles and objectives. Infrastructure Elements are all elements in the transport system, like Vehicles, Vehicle Type, Lines, Links, and Stations etc. Those element provide facility for given needs, therefore the Infrastructure Elements are designed as a complement to Persona.

The system to calculate this weights works in four steps:

Classes of Persona, Role or Infrastructure Elements incorporate entities with similar attributes, this allows easy management of descriptions by implementing classes of stations (main station, hub, terminal, etc.), classes of roles (business, industry, retailer, service provider, etc.) or disease

1. Determine the specific descriptions of user‟s needs from Persona, Role, Class of Persona and personal settings. 2. Determine the specific description of possibly used infrastructure element. 3. Calculate a penalty factor on usage of

Figure 5. Using class system to determine user and infrastructure element specific attributes. (Schlingensiepen, et al., 2015)

User Class e.g. Disease Pattern

depends on

P

Personal User Record

Calculation Record

Cid

...

Ci3 Ci2 Ci1

2 2 2 4 4

0 4

8 0

2

4

4

0 4

0 2 Δcd= 0 Δc...= 2

Δc2= -4 Δc1= -2

8 4

C

Infrastructure Class e.g. Type of station

Station or Link Record

2 4 4 4 0

C

Infrastructure e.g. Station

Calculation Record

P

depends on

depends on

C

Cu1 Cu2 Cu3 ... Cud

depends on

C

User Class e.g. Mental Problems

Supply Chain Management Journal each possibly element.

used

infrastructure

4. Calculate the route efforts while using weighted speed and costs. Determination of the specific attributes and values for a user is done by collecting values for each dimension from the class system, by the following algorithm: (i) Starting with personal record, (ii) if dimension attribute is set take it and go to next dimension, (iii) if attribute is not set go on with the record of the class this record is based on. (iv) Reaching the root class without getting an attribute means this dimension is not described for this user. Figure 1 show determination of attribute values. Determination of the specific description of an infrastructure element follows the same algorithm using the records of infrastructure description. Calculation of pki factor pui (User u uses infrastructure element i) for n determined dimensions is done by calculation of the normalized distance in ℝn, as shown in eq. 1 the distance in dimension d (Δcd) is calculated by the difference of the user attribute in dimension d cud and the infrastructure attribute in this dimension cid. The normalized weight factor is calculated by Pythagoras and normalized by division by maximal distance in the given dimension (see eq. 2).

(1)

⃗⃗⃗⃗⃗

√∑ √

(2)

Calculation of the transport option efforts usually is done by minimizing two aspects speed (time consumption) and costs, where most transport planers use transport time as a target dimension and add the cost as an informational aspect. In our use case we decided to use travel time as a target dimension as well. This

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lead to the need to convert the pki factors in time to get a value to minimize. Since we get pki factors from the steps above, we can calculate a weighted fictional transport time. Therefore all time consuming usages of transport vehicles are multiplied with the specific pki factor for this user and vehicle and the usage of static infrastructure elements like stations is considered by adding a summand that is calculated by multiplying the penalty factor with a user specific constant. ∑ ∑

∑ ∑

(3) (4)

Eq. 3 shows the calculation of time consumption for a transport option (tO) as a sum of time using m vehicles (tvx) and waiting/change vehicles at o hubs (tsx). Eq. 4 shows the calculation of user specific weighted time consumptions (tuO) using calculated pki summands (pux) and personal (user specific) weight factor (wu). 5. Cloudification of logistics New technologies in terms of ITS and ICT include cloud computing. An activity which based in a considerable percentage on cloud technologies cloud be considered as a cloudyfied activity and the action is called clodification of that activity. If the activity is logistics the new concept of cloudification of logistics can be defined. Logistics as the management of the flow of things from the origin to the point of sale based on the requirements of customers or organisations has the following components: - Information flow – this component is very important for ICT because at this moment 100% of information is handling by information and communication technologies.

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Supply Chain Management Journal - Production – the equipment involved in production is in majority of cases automated and a strong ICT infrastructure is needed. - Packaging – is the same case as previous one in production. - Warehousing – the complexity and the diversity of products need an automated and IT base infrastructure for warehousing. - Material handling – the handling of the materials and products at this time is supported by ICT infrastructure and this infrastructure is, in majority of cases, shared with other activities in logistics

premises for Mobility as a Service for people and goods are revealed. European Commission has dedicated efforts to define the concept of IoT and to find the best way to put in practice their initiatives in the field of Internet of Things. (Schlingensiepen, et al., 2013) The new paradigm – everything will be connected and will be able to collect and send information. New approach in logistics – all logistics components will be part of the IoT – the business has to be re-organised and changed. Figure 6. Internet of things

- Transport – vehicles, equipment and infrastructure involved in transport are now designed in the ICT and new technologies context and more than 50 percent of the components‟ value is coming from this ICT part. - Security – information, products and assets security needs ICT infrastructure and cloud computing is mainly a solution for application of security principles. The cloudification of logistics is based on existing technologies as well as new trends and technologies and one important concept is Internet of Things, all physical components will be Internet oriented designed and they will be able to process information and send this information to different things and computers. IoT will be able to create the context for a new form of this cloud as an invisible system able to provide different type of services. The Internet of Things (IoT) has been defined in Recommendation ITU-T Y.2060 (International Telecommunication Union, 2015) as a global infrastructure for the information society, enabling advanced services by interconnecting (physical and virtual) things based on existing and evolving interoperable information and communication technologies. Based on this global infrastructure a new approach of urban logistics can be developed and the

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6. Conclusions The new urban approach is focused on the integration of different components; one European model is the model with 6 elements. In this integrated mix a very important role is allocated to urban mobility for people and goods. The urban mobility is the key factor in moving people, information and goods in terms of providing a better quality of life in urban space. Urban logistics is part of urban mobility component and implicit is one of the smart city. Urban logistics is under a high pressure in terms of reduction the transport time and the direct and indirect effects on urban economy and environment. In this direction the ICT and new technologies are a very efficient way to improve the results and the

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Supply Chain Management Journal operation of urban logistics and the shift to e-logistics and cloudification of logistics is up to logistics operators and industry.

FRAME Consortium, 2015. "European ITS Architecture FRAME" [Online] Available at: http://frame-online.eu [Accessed 20 December 2015].

Mobility as a Service as a new direction of urban mobility development is to focus all mobility activities more on the traveller and the commodities than the vehicle and traffic flows. MaaS is more oriented on service itself than on the transport modes and an integration of transport modes is mandatory as main support for transport activities. This integration has to important components: one is related to integration of infrastructure (multimodal nodes, stations and hubs) and another one is related to integration and exchange of information (a strong informational link between different transport modes).

International Telecommunication Union, n.d. "Internet of Things" [Online] Available at: https://www.itu.int/rec/TREC-Y.2060-201206-I [Accessed 20 December 2015].

Cloudification of logistics has to be oriented on fulfilling the consumer needs and requests and to support all logistics‟ activities. Consumers may use other services if it is „more responsible‟ and more oriented on their new values and to new shift in leaving in urban spaces. The new technologies and ICT are the best way to put in practice this new approach of urban logistics as main component of MaaS. References CO-GISTICS Consortium, 2015. "COGISTICS Services" [Online] Available at: http://cogistics.eu/services/ Costa, J., 2011. "Personas: Putting the Focus Back on the User" Research Design. European Logistics Association, 2015. "European Logistics Association" [Online] Available at: http://www.elalog.eu European Smart Cities project, n.d. "Smart city model" [Online] Available at: http://www.smartcities.eu/model.html [Accessed 20 December 2015].

Nemtanu, F. C., Moise, I. M., Beldescu, M. & Iordache, V., 2013. "Model of Cloudified Traveller Information System Based on Petri Nets" Alba-Iulia, s.n. Schlingensiepen, J., Mehmood, R. & Nemtanu, F. C., 2015. "Framework for an autonomic transport system in smart cities" Cybernetics and Information Technologies, 15(5), pp. 50-62. Schlingensiepen, J., Mehmood, R., Nemtanu, F. C. & Niculescu, M., 2013. "Increasing Sustainability of Road Transport in European Cities and Metropolitan Areas by Facilitating Autonomic Road Transport Systems (ARTS)" In: Sustainable Automotive Technologies 2013. s.l.:Springer International Publishing, pp. 201-210. Schlingensiepen, J. et al., 2015. "Empowering People with Disabilities Using Urban Public Transport" 6th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2015) and the Affiliated Conferences, Las Vegas, USA AHFE 2015. Schlingensiepen, J., Nemtanu, F. C., Mehmood, R. & McCluskey, L., 2016. "Autonomic Transport Management Systems—Enabler for Smart Cities, Personalized Medicine, Participation and Industry Grid/Industry 4.0." In: Intelligent Transportation Systems – Problems and Perspectives. s.l.:Springer International Publishing, pp. 3-35. Sudalaimuthu, S. & Anthony, R., 2009. "Logistics Management for International Business: Text and Cases." New Delhi: PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.

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