Distribution structures, as studied in this paper, involve the spatial layout of the freight transport and storage system used to move goods between production and consumption locations. Decisions on this layout are important to companies as they allow them to balance customer service levels and logistics costs. Until now there has been very little descriptive research into the factors that drive decisions about these structures. Moreover, the literature on the topic is scattered across various research streams. In this paper we review and consolidate this literature, with the aim to arrive at a comprehensive list of factors. Three relevant research streams were identified: Supply Chain Management (SCM), Transportation and Geography. The SCM and Transportation literature mostly focus on distribution structure including distribution centre (DC) location selection from a viewpoint of service level and logistics costs factors. The Geography literature focuses on spatial DC location decisions and resulting patterns mostly explained by location factors such as labour and land availability. Our review indicates that the main factors that drive decision-making are “demand level”, “service level”, “product characteristics”, “logistics costs”, “labour and land”, “accessibility” and “contextual factors”. The main trade-off influencing distribution structure selection is “service level” versus “logistics costs”. Together, the research streams provide a rich picture of the factors that drive distribution structure including DC location selection. We conclude with a framework that shows the relative position of these factors. Future work can focus on completing the framework by detailing out the sub factors and empirically testing the direction and strength of relationships. Cooperation between the three research streams will be useful to further extend and operationalize the framework.

Purpose: Port performance and port choice have been treated as separate streams of research. This hampers the efforts of ports to anticipate on and respond to possible future changes in port choice by shippers, freight forwarders and carriers. The purpose of this paper is to develop and demonstrate a port performance measurement methodology, extended from the perspective of port choice, which includes hinterland performance and a weighting of attributes from a port choice perspective.Design/methodology/approach: A review of literature is used to extend the scope of port performance indicators. Multi-criteria decision analysis is used to operationalize the context of port choice, presenting a weighted approach using the Best-Worst Method (BWM). An empirical model is built based on an extensive port stakeholder survey.Findings: Transport costs and times along the transport chain are the dominant factors for port competitiveness. Satisfaction, reputation and flexibility criteria are the other important decision criteria. The results also show how the availability of different modal alternatives impact on the position of a port. A ranking of routes for hinterland regions is done.Originality/value: The paper focuses on two extensions of port performance measurement. So far, not all factors that determine port choice have been included in port performance studies. Here, first, factors related to hinterland services are included. Second, a weighting of port performance measures is proposed. The importance of factors is assessed using BWM. The approach is demonstrated empirically for a case of the European contestable hinterland regions, which so far have lacked quantitative analysis.

Freight transport decarbonization is currently an urgent challenge. Decarbonization strategies have a specific time to take effect, and it is essential to consider their time dependence. The system dynamics approach is well suited to represent feedback, lagged responses, and the time dependence of decarbonization strategies. We carried out a systematic literature review of system dynamics models in relation to strategies for freight decarbonization to identify the treatment of relevant dynamics of the system within the models. The 50 studies that fulfilled our search criteria were categorized by decarbonization strategies, the external factors needed to support them, and simulated policy instruments. The results show that no model presented a broad view of the system, addressing a limited combination of strategies. Most importantly, system dynamics models do not clarify how time-dependent behavior is determined, which indicates a significant research gap that can be critical for understanding the policy’s urgency and impacts.

The phenomenon of urban sprawl has been studied extensively. Most research so far has focused on residential settlements. A growing number of studies have addressed industrial deconcentration. Our focus in this paper is on logistics sprawl, i.e. the growth and suburban relocation of warehousing activities. Specifically, we investigate the difference in logistics sprawl between monocentric and polycentric systems of cities. The literature suggests that logistics activities, like residential settlements, will gradually move to suburbs as land prices increase in central areas. As research for logistics has mostly focused on monocentric systems, the question is whether this also applies to polycentric systems. We compare two cases, the Paris region in France, representative of a monocentric development, and the Dutch Randstad area as a polycentric case. We use regional statistics on warehouse settlements in both regions for a descriptive analysis of changes since the mid 2000s to derive metrics for concentration. The cases show different patterns of change in concentration. In contrast to Paris, logistics activities within the Randstad have intensified in dense areas. We explore the reasons that may explain this difference and conclude that urban structure, spatial planning policies and the freight hub quality of a region are factors of influence.