NSF/USDOT: Collaborative Research: Impact of Real-time Carrier-shipper Interaction on Transportation System Performance

运输部门继续采用提供实时信息的电信和信息技术，以提高生产力和业绩。最近，这些技术已开始改变合同谈判的方式，使需求和供应能够通过市场机制动态匹配。随着运输服务拍卖市场的发展，运输市场的结构可能正在发生重大变化，拍卖市场的形式是将货运量（托运人的需求）与运输能力（承运人的报价）相匹配的互联网网站。 这些虚拟枢纽的发展和他们的特点有根本性的影响的方法来分析这样的系统的性能，以及将这些机制在运营决策的承运人和托运人（和/或他们的代理人）。本研究项目将开发建模技术来分析承运人托运人在网上电子运输市场的背景下的互动。承运人和托运人被建模为实体，根据历史（经验）、学习、对当前行动未来后果的预期以及不断发展的战略，确定他们与其他代理人及其环境的互动。除了开发方法，以支持个人球员的策略，在非合作决策环境中，不同程度的信息共享，研究调查整体市场行为，其效率和不同的市场环境和个人球员的策略下产生的托运人服务水平。所获得的结果是相关的托运人和运营商在网上市场，以及政府机构和决策实体的结构和效率的运输系统。为了利用实时拍卖市场的潜在机会，托运人和承运人都需要更好地掌握实时信息，不仅要了解其货物的状态，或船队，但也对通过这些市场交易的整个系统。 该研究的方法学贡献的应用范围超出了运输系统的领域，包括分布在空间和时间上的各种基础设施服务。

The transportation sector continues to adopt telecommunication and information technologies that provide real-time information to enhance productivity and performance. Recently these technologies have started to modify the way contracts are negotiated, by enabling demand and supply to be matched dynamically through market mechanisms. A significant change may be taking place in the structure of the transportation market, with the development of auction markets for transportation services, in the form of Internet sites that match shipments (shippers demand) and transportation capacity (carriers offer). The development of these virtual hubs and their characteristics have fundamental implications for the methodologies to both analyze the performance of such systems, as well as to incorporate these mechanisms in the operational decisions of carriers and shippers (and/or their agents).This research project will develop modeling techniques to analyze carrier-shipper interaction in the context of an online electronic transportation marketplace. Carriers and shippers are modeled as entities that determine their interaction with other agents and with their environment on the basis of history (experience), learning, expectations about future consequences of current actions, and evolving strategies. In addition to developing methods to support individual player strategies in a non-cooperative decision environment with varying degrees of information sharing, the study investigates overall market behavior, its efficiency and resulting shipper service levels under different market settings and individual player strategies. The results obtained are of relevance to both shippers and carriers operating in online markets, as well as government agencies and policy-making entities concerned with the structure and efficiency of the transportation system. To take advantage of potential opportunities in real-time auction markets, both shippers and carriers require a new level of mastery of real-time information about not only the state of their shipments and./or fleets, but also about the entire system transacted through those markets. The methodological contributions of the research have applications that extend beyond the realm of transportation systems to include various infrastructure services that are distributed over space and time.