Freight Distribution in Small Islands: Integration between Naval Services and Parcel Lockers

Abstract

Freight transportation in urban areas represents an essential activity from the standpoint of economic development; in recent years, the spread of e-commerce (also accelerated by COVID-19) has contributed to increasing the demand for freight distribution over short distances. In most cities, the approaches and measures are often based on new technologies. Nevertheless, today there are contexts wherein delivery operations represent critical tasks to be solved. Furthermore, low accessibility areas, such as small islands, present further problems due to their exclusive dependence on maritime links (and often low-reliability services). This paper tackles this topic, formulating and solving a distribution problem by linking shipping services with last-mile distribution operated by means of an automatic delivery service (parcel lockers). A test application is proposed by considering the small island of Lipari in the archipelago of the Aeolian islands (Sicily, Southern Italy). The results show that such a type of service could reduce the user’s waiting time when compared to traditional home deliveries.