Decision Support System for Intermodal Freight Transportation Planning: An Integrated View on Transport Emissions, Cost and Time Sensitivity

The evaluation and selection of intermodal routes with regard to the key objectives, i.e., transit time, transport emissions and cost, is the main challenge in the design of intermodal networks. The aim of this paper is to present a decision support system for intermodal freight transportation planning, which offers methodological contributions to the research on transport mode, route and carrier selection as well as results for industrial practitioners for the assessment of emission abatement potentials. Core of this approach is a capacitated multi-commodity network flow model considering three minimization objectives, i.e. costs, time and CO $$_2$$ -equivalents. In this contribution a tri-objective mixed-integer linear model formulation minimizes the number of transported and transshipped full truck loads taking into account tied in-transit capital and the distance travelled. The decision support system is validated in an exemplary case study application analyzing the sensitivity of objectives on optimal route and carrier choice. By applying the augmented $$\varepsilon $$ -constraint method, a Pareto-efficient frontier is determined to investigate the tradeoff between economic and ecological objectives in intermodal freight transportation planning.