Transportation Management
- What is a smart city? A smart city is an urban area that uses different types of electronic data collection/sensors to supply information used to manage assets and resources efficiently.
- According to the IOT institute the top 5 smart cities in the world are Singapore, Barcelona, London, San Francisco and Oslo. Factors used to when considering smart cities include their adoption of smart grid technologies, intelligent lighting, the use of information technology to improve traffic, Wi-Fi access points, smartphone penetration, and the app landscape.
- Developing the idea of smart cities further is Ocado, a British online supermarket who use intelligent transportation to improve their efficiency in the last mile.
- The last mile technique being the movement of people and goods from a transportation hub to a final destination in the home.
- Each Ocado van not only stores groceries but also a vast collection of sensors and embedded computing devices that collect vast amounts of data about the UK transportation infrastructure.
- These low-power embedded sensors constantly measure wheel speed, fuel consumption, engine revs, gear changes, braking and cornering speeds, bumps in the road, temperature, and other useful data. When correlated to the map of public roads in the UK, this information helps the Ocado Technology data science team figure out optimal routes for delivery so that drivers can actually fulfill the one-hour slot promise to customers.
- Ocado is leading the retail industry in efficiency when it comes to the last mile process and other logistics operations. They are endlessly trying to evolve and develop further and are looking into the use of self-driving trucks convoys so that the trucks drive at consistent speeds and optimize routes, helping relieve traffic in cities, as well as helping improve road safety.
- Furthermore Ocado has been looking at drones for faster home deliveries; the idea behind them being that they will solve internal inefficiency of the last mile process. However there are limitations, as drones can only carry a couple of kg in weight and can only travel for 10 to 15 miles affecting both route density and the drop size mean vans still have the edge over drones in the foreseeable future.
Charlotte Beswick and Ellen Gearing
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