Sustainable Development in Logistics and Transportation: Models and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainable logistics and transportation aim to improve profitability and reduce the ecological impacts of logistics activities. Seeking a balance among economic growth, environmental care, and societal health, sustainable development in logistics has drawn tremendous attentions from different aspects, such as materials handling and shipping, risk analysis and mitigation, emergency response, to name a few. Take the transportation of hazardous materials (hazmats) for example. Despite the excellent safety record of the industry, the hazmats, including general dangerous cargos and miscellaneous dangerous goods (e.g., hazardous wastes), still pose increasing threats to the surrounding people and environment, at the site or en route. Especially when an incident occurs, the consequences can be catastrophic, due to the nature of the cargos and the uncertainty that this brings.

In the past few decades, the shrinking profit margin and growing customer expectation have put extreme strain on the logistics industry; the ongoing coronavirus pandemic brings even more pressures resulting from unprecedented supply chain disruptions, global tensions, trade wars, and possible economic recession. Although existing literature has proposed effective methods to boost profits and control risks in different ways, sustainable development in logistics and transportation still offers interesting challenges to the areas of management sciences and operations research.

Focusing on the applications of models, technologies, and methodologies, the goal of this Special Issue is to provide a comprehensive overview of the literature, demonstrate the criticality of maintaining sustainability in logistics and transportation, promote advanced analytical and managerial techniques in mitigating ecological influences, and identify areas of potential impacts for scholars and practitioners.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Transportation of hazardous materials
• Waste management (e.g., medical and hazardous wastes)
• Risk analysis and assessment
• Coordinative decision making in sustainable development (e.g., multicriteria decision making, group decision making, game theoretic and conflict models)
• Emergency logistics and management
• Applications of emerging technologies in sustainable transportation and logistics (e.g., artificial and augmented intelligence, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, physical internet, etc.)
• Sustainable supply chain and logistics management during pandemic events
• Mitigating the impacts of disruptions and uncertainties on logistics sustainability

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ginger Y. Ke
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jiahong Zhao
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• sustainable logistics
• hazardous materials
• waste management
• decision and game theoretic models
• emerging technologies
• risk analysis and assessment
• disruption and uncertainty
• emergency management