CLASS: a DSS for the analysis and the simulation of urban freight systems

The complexity of methods and models for the investigation of urban freight systems has pushed researchers to develop decision support systems (DSS) for the analysis and simulation of the effects of city logistics measures and the effects of exogenous scenario changes, as land-use, demographic and socio-economic characteristics. In fact, today these types of systems provide to support decision-makers to understand and simulate the structure of freight urban system and to compute some indicators that compared with target and benchmarking values allow to identify its level of service. Such a DSS, named CLASS (City Logistics Analysis and Simulation Support System), has been recently proposed and in this paper some advancements are presented. Then, two application examples for the simulation of urban freight transport in a large urban area and the assessment of freight distribution activity location in a medium size urban area are presented.