Intermodal transportation and CO2 emissions: a review, assessment and a case study

Abstract

Transportation and logistics have experienced an important development in terms of services planning and optimisation. One of the major issues is their impact on the environment and society, because the activity is still largely based on road mode. Alternatives are not lacking, but are still struggling with levels of sophistication. The contributions in this area are dedicated to green supply chain models at strategic level. In contrast, there are comparatively fewer contributions at tactical level aiming at both economic and environment efficiency. The objective of this article is to establish a literature review of intermodal transportation networks optimisation models at tactical level of decision, integrating sustainability objectives. We focus on those which emphasised the intermodalism with or without stressing CO2 emissions objectives. We found that the majority of these models have a potential impact in terms of CO2 emissions reduction even if this is not stated as premium objective.