Multi-actor multi-criteria analysis for sustainable city distribution: a new assessment framework

Urban areas are facing several challenges, especially to organise freight transport in a sustainable way. Many innovative city distribution concepts have failed because not all stakeholders were taken into account in the decision-making process. Evaluating urban freight solutions summons the need for a new approach, taking into consideration different conflicting objectives from different stakeholders. Within STRAIGHTSOL (strategies and measures for smarter urban freight solutions, EC FP7), a systematic impact assessment framework dedicated to freight transportation has been developed. The so-called city distribution - multi-actor multi-criteria analysis (CD-MAMCA) incorporates the city distribution actors and their objectives as the primary focus complemented with a MCDA performed with the PROMETHEE-GDSS method. In this paper, the specific framework dedicated to city distribution is fully explained through a case study in the UK charity sector with Oxfam which tested remote monitoring of the banks leading to dynamic collection scheduling.