By now, you would have been familiar with many of the basic ideas and methods found in city logistics. You know “why” it is important, “what” it is, “how” to improve, and “how” to assess the improvement. What’s left is to learn “how” to learn more about the whys, whats and hows!

In this week, we will present to you a few key ways how you can create knowledge about urban freight yourself in your city. We will start with the most basic element of knowledge, data and build that up to a virtual universe, created to represent urban freight transport. But, we are not just using these to understand the city more or to see how vehicles move. We want to use these methods to explore how freight transport can be improved without actually carrying out real-life tests.

Some of the uses are in policy analysis, forecasting of the future, identifying current bottle necks and problems, understanding impacts, which are not easily monitored, etc. These tools have been used to develop our understanding of the past and are being used to understand the role of city logistics in the future.