Design of a Logistics Decision Support System for Transportation Mode Selection considering Carbon Emission Cost

This paper considers logistics decision support system which deals with transportation mode selection considering transportation and carbon emission cost. Transportation and carbon emission costs vary with the choice of transportation modes and to become competitive companies need to find proper transportation modes for their logistics services. However, due to the restricted capacity of transportation modes, it is difficult to balance transportation and carbon emission costs when designing logistics network including transportation mode choice for each service. Therefore this paper aims to analyze the trade-off relationship between transportation and carbon emission cost in mode selection of intermodal transportation and to provide optimal green logistics strategy. In this paper, the logistics decision support system is designed based on mixed integer programming model. To understand the trade-off relationship of transportation and carbon emission cost, the system is tested with various scenarios including transportation of containers between Seoul and Busan. The analysis results show that, even though sea transportation combined with trucking is competitive in carbon emission per unit distance travelled, the total cost of carbon emission and transportation for the sea transportation may not have competitive advantage over other transportation modes including rail and truck transportation modes. The sea-based intermodal logistics service may induce detours which have negative impacts on the overall carbon emission. The proposed logistics decision support system is expected to play key role in green logistics and supply chain management.