Assessing urban logistics pooling sustainability via a hierarchic dashboard from a group decision perspective

This paper aims to propose, via an experimental collaborative decision support method, to define a grid of indicators and a reference situation database to measure the sustainable performance of urban logistics pooling systems. To do this, we start by defining the notion of sustainability in the 4As approach, after what we identify the main sustainability indicators from an overview of the literature, and class them into four categories (one for each A of the approach). Then, a group of 20 experts is required and an iterative experimental collaborative decision making method is applied to the group to converge to the concordance of a set of indicators. The method allowed us to define a hierarchic dashboard agreed by all experts with 7 main indicators and 9 secondary indicators. Moreover, the experts signaled the need of defining a unified basis of comparison to estimate initial situations. To do this, we proposed a database of urban routes from the French Surveys on Urban Goods Transport. This method has the advantage of proposing a dashboard agreed by all involved stakeholders. The proposed dashboard is an example and to provide a more unified one the experience has to be iterated using different groups of decision makers. Therefore, this paper shows the patterns to reproduce it, since the method is able to be replicated in any context of group decision in urban logistics. The originality of the paper arises on the use of an experimental group decision method using a group with a majority of practitioners, and to validate it by consensus.