Agent-Based Simulation of urban goods distribution: a literature review

Agent-based simulation (ABS) appears to be a suitable tool for research and application in the field of city logistics. In this paper, an attempt was made to classify the current literature on ABS in urban freight distribution following some homogeneity criteria. A set of six criteria was adopted and relevant papers were classified accordingly. It emerges that agent-based simulation models are suitable for use in simulating urban freight distribution, identifying a set of agents (at most, one agent per stakeholder) that operate to achieve their objectives, following rules, interacting, and learning from experience. However, this approach is still to be fully developed: the applications provided in the literature are only for test cases, refer to small study areas and a limited number of agents.