Agent-Based Model for the In- and Outgoing Parcel Quantities of Companies in an Urban Area

Increasing e-commerce activities, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to a substantial growth of parcel volumes that must be delivered and picked up by courier, express, and parcel service providers (CEPSPs). In transportation planning, freight demand models are used to evaluate the effects of such developments. Even though the B2B sector contributes considerably to parcel volumes, existing models primarily focus on parcel deliveries to private customers. Hence, this study aims to develop an agent-based model that explicitly represents the in- and out-going parcel volumes of companies in urban areas delivered by CEPSPs. An approach based on Open Data and self-conducted expert interviews with CEPSPs is developed. First, OpenStreetMap data is used to geographically represent companies with the corresponding sector assignment within a study area in Karlsruhe, Germany. Second, a concept for modeling the weekly in- and out-going parcel volume for each company in the study area is developed using literature-based data. The approach is integrated into the existing agent-based framework logiTopp considering all relevant CEPSPs of the respective area. The application shows that modeling CEP-based transportation volumes of companies based on Open Data is possible and leads to reasonable results even though restrictions apply to the granularity of the used data. However, potential is seen in generating a well-funded empirical database of companies’ in- and out-going parcel demand structures to improve the model further.