PFI:BIC - Smart CROwdsourced Urban Delivery (CROUD) System

创新伙伴关系：建设创新能力（PFI:BIC）旨在开发一个众包城市交付（crowd-sourced urban delivery，简称crowd）系统，该系统承诺提供一个高效、绿色的城市交付服务系统。电子商务的兴起正在迅速改变零售业的格局。根据美国人口普查局2014年的一份报告，到2017年，在线销售将占这个4.5万亿美元行业的10%以上。为了在这个不断增长的市场中保持竞争力，零售商面临着巨大的压力，必须以低廉的价格将商品快速送达消费者手中。大型资产运输公司（如UPS和联邦快递）在城市地区的本地快递成本效益并不高，主要是因为它们的分销网络是通过中心运输的，而不是直接在客户和零售商之间运输。这种固有的低效率因对当日送达的需求不断增加而加剧，当日送达要求更频繁地派送，从而增加了运输成本。当日送达被广泛认为是目前电子商务的圣杯。最近亚马逊、b谷歌、Uber等科技巨头纷纷进入这个战场，证明了城市快递行业的巨大机遇和挑战。具有讽刺意味的是，运输系统中存在大量未使用的运力。首先，由于城市快递行业高度分散，整合其能力往往很困难。另一个未充分利用的能力是，道路上有数百万辆可以用来运送货物的空后备箱的私人乘用车。解决供需之间缺乏充分协调的问题是解决城市快递挑战的关键。由于无线通信和移动计算的最新进展，一个很有前途的解决方案是已成功应用于客运（例如优步和Lyft）的众包技术。该项目的总体目标是开发和评估一个众包城市交付（CROwd-sourced Urban Delivery，简称crowd）系统。有了crowd，消费者将享受到更快、更便宜、更可靠的快递服务。零售行业的消费需求将更加强劲。快递业将提高其盈利能力，减少对环境的影响，同时雇用高度流动和高效的劳动力。该项目还将通过提供培训机会和提高多学科课程的材料来教育下一代企业家。该项目的科学贡献跨越多个学科，它们在支持以人为本的智能crowd系统方面密切相关。首先，该项目将导致定价机制，重点是在不同的市场条件下匹配消费者和快递员。在双边市场的定价分析中，匹配模型的使用是一种新颖的方法，比如在crod系统中发现的thouse，它有望在其他市场中得到启示。其次，该项目将有助于理解和预测在crowd系统中人类的行为和选择，这对行为计量经济学家来说是一个全新的领域。用本项目收集的行为数据校准的新计量经济模型将被纳入管理战略，以加强系统内消费者-快递员-技术的相互作用。第三，拟议的研究将开发基于智能手机的运动检测方法，这种方法非常适合跟踪和解释快递员的活动。最后，该项目将创建计算工具，以促进快递员之间的协作交付，并根据实时信息优化路线计划。在此过程中，将产生新的公式、算法和见解，以解决运筹学和计算经济学中的挑战性问题，例如带中继的网络设计、考虑转移和环境影响的实时车辆路线。该项目将由西北大学交通中心牵头，由来自土木与环境工程系和管理经济与决策科学系的三名研究人员参与。主要的工业合作伙伴是Zipments Inc.（小型企业，纽约市，纽约州），另一个主要的学术合作伙伴是伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校（UIC）（非营利研究型大学，伊利诺伊州芝加哥）。两家更广泛的合作伙伴也将加入该团队。它们是创新运输技术商业化中心（隶属于伊利诺斯州埃文斯顿NUTC的非营利研究机构）和供应链和物流管理中心（隶属于伊利诺斯州芝加哥UIC的非营利研究机构）。

This Partnerships for Innovation:Building Innovation Capacity (PFI:BIC) aims to develop a crowd-sourced urban delivery (CROUD) system that promises an efficient, greener, urban delivery service system. The rise of e-commerce is rapidly changing the landscape of retail business. By 2017, online sales will account for more than 10% of this $4.5 trillion industry, according to a 2014 U.S. Census Bureau report. To stay competitive in this growing market, retailers are under enormous pressure to quickly deliver the goods to their consumers at low prices. Large asset-based carriers (e.g., UPS and FedEx) are not particularly cost-efficient for express local deliveries in urban areas, essentially because their distribution networks are designed to transport through hubs rather than directly between customers and retailers. This inherent inefficiency is aggravated by mounting demand for same-day delivery--widely considered the Holy Grail for e-commerce at present--that requires more frequent dispatch and in turn increases transportation cost. Recent arrival of tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Uber in this battlefield attests to the tremendous opportunities and challenges in the urban delivery industry. Ironically, there exists a large volume of unused capacity in the transport system. For one thing, because the urban delivery industry is highly fragmented, consolidating its capacity is often difficult. Another underutilized capacity exists in millions of private passenger vehicles on the road with empty trunks that could be used for delivery. Addressing this lack of adequate coordination between demand and supply holds the key to solving the express urban delivery challenge. A promising solution, enabled by recent advances in wireless communication and mobile computing, is crowd-sourcing technology that has been successfully applied in passenger transport (e.g., Uber and Lyft). The overarching goal of this project is to develop and evaluate a CROwd-sourced Urban Delivery (CROUD) system. With CROUD, consumers will enjoy faster, cheaper and more reliable delivery service. The retail industry will see a stronger consumer demand. The delivery industry will improve its profitability and reduce its environmental impact, while employing a highly mobile and efficient workforce. The project will also educate next generation entrepreneurs by providing training opportunities and materials for upgrading curricula in multiple disciplines. The scientific contributions of the project span across several disciplines, and they are closely interconnected in supporting a human-centered smart CROUD system. First, the project will lead to pricing mechanisms that focus on matching consumers with couriers under varying market conditions. The use of matching models is novel in pricing analysis for two-sided markets, such as thouse found in CROUD systems, and it promises insights in other markets. Second, the project will help understand and predict behaviors and choices of humans in a CROUD system, a field completely new to behavioral econometrists. New econometric models, calibrated with behavioral data collected in this project, will be built into management strategies to enhance the consumer-courier-technology interaction in the system. Third, the proposed research will develop smartphone-based motion detection methods that are uniquely suited to track and interpret the activities of couriers. Finally, the project will create computational tools to facilitate collaborative delivery among couriers and to optimize routing plans based on real-time information. In doing so, new formulations, algorithms and insights will be generated for challenging problems in operations research and computational economics such as network design with relays, real-time vehicle routing considering transfer and environmental impacts.This project will be led by Northwestern University through its Transportation Center (NUTC), with three researchers from two departments: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Department of Managerial Economics and Decision Science. The primary industry partner is Zipments Inc. (small business, New York City, New York) and the other primary academic partner is the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) (non-profit research university, Chicago, Illinois). Two broader context partners will also join the team. They are Center for Commercialization of Innovative Transportation Technology (non-profit research institution operated within NUTC, Evanston, Illinois) and Center for Supply Chain and Logistics management (non-profit research institution affiliated with UIC, Chicago, Illinois).