Cooperative Strategies for Fleet Management. Motivation It is normal now for administrations of urban areas to promote sustainable multi- modal transport systems. These are intended to reduce energy consumption, pollution and ve- hicle emissions whilst maintaining transport safety, economy, efficiency and accessibility. Current organisation of the distribution of goods in urban areas is inefficient, with impacts on the environment (through sub-optimal route and tour planning, and through the almost exclusive use of motorised vehicles), on safety (through violation of restrictions, e.g. in the transport of hazardous materials and through interactions with other motorised and non-motorised road users) and on monetary costs. One of the main causes is the lack of cooperation between hauliers and shippers, and the retailers that they supply, and also among hauliers themselves. Namely, while most trucking companies make use of advanced technologies and systems to monitor and optimise the performance of their own fleets, they do not share data with other hauliers, thus contributing to the global inefficiency. The development of new system-optimal methodologies and the creation of a platform for sharing information based on cooperative ICT can achieve substantial benefits to the field of city logistics. Buses are a key form of public transport in most urban areas, being managed increasingly within control centres that incorporate Automatic Vehicle (Bus) Location (AVL) systems. Urban Traf- fic Control (UTC) centres are also in widespread use for control of general traffic, and are being extended in scope to incorporate traffic management more generally as urban traffic manage- ment and control (UTMC) centres. However, these two systems are often operated separately so there is clearly scope for co-operation, co-ordination and even full integration. This is be- coming increasingly practical technically and directly matches transport policy aspirations at the European, national and local levels. Premises Vehicle fleets of various kinds form an important part of urban and interurban traffic. Cooperative use of information available from AVL data in these fleets will bring wide benefits. • There exists a vast amount of data, collected by individual hauliers, as well as background research for scheduling and optimising the delivery of goods in urban environments. • Technological advances in the fields of positioning and communications (crowd sourcing, vehicle-to-infrastructure communication etc), but also in terms...
