Heleen Buldeo Rai

Vrije Universiteit Brussel | VUB · Mobilise research group

Cities all over the world are rethinking their mobility policies in light of environmental and quality of life objectives. As space is one of cities’ scarcest resources, mobility’s spatial footprint is increasingly scrutinized as externality to mitigate. Similar to passenger transport, goods transport is envisioned to shift towards efficient and ze...

The surge in online shopping has contributed in no small part to the return of warehouses in cities. Urban warehouses allow retail and delivery companies to serve consumer populations faster. They are also a necessary condition for the transition to an urban logistics system that is efficient and sustainable. However, integrating urban warehouses i...

Although it has been studied extensively throughout the past 20 years, the environmental impact of e-commerce can still be considered a controversial subject. Particularly for those wondering whether online shopping constitutes a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional store-based shopping, evidence can be found that quantitatively...

The maturation of digital(ized) consumption, together with the amplification of cities’ initiatives in response to local and global environmental challenges, has placed goods transport, an essential but impactful activity, at the forefront of urban stakeholders’ scrutiny. High-performance and low-impact supply chains benefit from the presence of lo...

Online retail channels increasingly shape consumers’ purchase behaviour: we access a diversity of product types through web-shops; employ both smartphones and digital screens in stores; navigate the retail space by browsing online; and order pantry items, fresh groceries as well as prepared foods to be delivered at our doorsteps. The profound impac...

The global COVID-19 pandemic has led to the implementation of health measures of varying degrees and scales. The lockdowns that took place in 2020, especially, have had a major impact on cities, transforming urban lifestyles, economic activities and mobility. Logistics became a priority activity. Faced with changed levels and types of consumption,...

Automation represents the next big buzz in transport and promises many advantages beneficial for society, including a more efficient use of space, energy, time, as well as reduced costs. An impressive range of autonomous vehicles is introduced, covering applications for personal and goods transport. In particular in response to the global pandemic...

E-commerce is a rapidly growing and evolving sector. The sector is however struggling with organising its last mile deliveries in order to meet the sustainability requirements, both economically and environmentally. Multiple studies have compared deliveries to collection points with deliveries to residential home addresses in sustainability terms....

Internet, digitalisation and access to technology have transformed contemporary consumption patterns and habits. Whether or not these changes hold beneficial or detrimental implications for society is subject to ongoing debate. Specifically concerning the environmental impacts of online and omnichannel retail, claims have been made on both sides: c...

As more and more people are buying more and more items online, limiting the ecological footprint of e-commerce deliveries is pressing. Research suggests several initiatives for retailers and logistics service providers to take, but consumer-involvement is key. This research investigates how to encourage consumers’ sustainable decision-making in the...

Online and omnichannel retail developments placed logistics at the front-end of consumers’ purchase journeys. Particularly the last mile of the supply chain increasingly affects consumer satisfaction, while its financial and environmental impact is critical. “Crowd logistics” is introduced as a promising solution. As consumers are increasingly driv...

Depuis le début de la crise sanitaire liée à la pandémie de COVID-19, les magasins traditionnels ont souffert dans de nombreux secteurs alors que le e-commerce s'est considérablement popularisé. Conséquence : pour assurer la distribution des ventes en ligne, il a fallu inventer de nouveaux canaux de distribution. Au point de transformer la logistiq...

Modern urban-transport planning requires evidence-based insights into current transport flows to better understand the needs and impacts of policymaking. Urban transport includes passenger and freight vehicles, which have different behavior, and the need for such a separation is often ignored in research and practice [1]. New digital data sources p...

Environmental assessments of e-commerce often focus on the last mile. Collection points are considered more beneficial than home delivery but this largely depends on how consumers’ collection trips are organised. Because this information is lacking, our objective is to find out how consumers make use of and travel to collection points by means of a...

The number of consumers that make online purchases is growing, together with the frequency in which these purchases are made. This change in consumer behaviour revitalised the practice of home delivery. Consumers prefer their homes in favour of alternative locations, despite the fair chance that they are not present at the time of delivery. The res...

The retail sector has changed radically in the last years, driven by possibilities created by the internet. Consumers adapted their behaviour accordingly, purchasing online as well as in-store and combining several retail channels for a single purchase. This type of behaviour is called “omnichannel” and spurred the development of retail models acco...

Retailers and consumers are increasingly “omnichannel”. This means that retailers offer multiple integrated offline and online channels to their customers, while consumers use multiple offline and online channels throughout their shopping journeys. In these shopping journeys, consumers can travel for researching, testing, receiving and returning ac...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify in what way logistics service providers are involved in the logistics operations of omnichannel retailers. Given the importance of logistics in omnichannel retail and the complexities that it brings forth, it is unclear if the current tendency towards logistics outsourcing continues, and how logistic...

Consumers live in an omnichannel environment, in which they use both online and offline channels for their shopping activities. The result is an increase in parcels shipped to consumers’ homes, challenging urban freight systems in terms of efficiency and sustainability. Many measures exist, that aim to optimise and improve activities of logistics s...

Purpose Currently, it is unclear how omnichannel retailers can create a last mile offer that is both attractive and sustainable from an economic and environmental point of view. The purpose of this paper is to explore to which extent consumers are willing to adopt last mile options that are more sustainable and how these options should be composed...

Crowd logistics is an alternative to traditional home deliveries by parcel companies and is believed to be more sustainable. The idea of crowd logistics is that parcels and passengers are co-transported along a passenger trip that was intended to be made for another purpose. Due to the novelty of this concept and the fact that existing crowd logist...

Today’s consumer has high expectations concerning retailers’ delivery services. Meanwhile, the impact of urban freight transport on cities intensifies. The concept of crowd logistics entails to optimise transport flows by sharing available vehicle capacities for freight. Therefore, it can contribute positively to both challenges. While there are en...

Home deliveries are the preferred delivery option of online consumers but they are not sustainable in the long term. They are very expensive and increase freight traffic while not necessarily decreasing shopping travel. Deliveries to a locker in an automated parcel station (APS) could be a more sustainable alternative but this solution is not very...

An increasing number of retailers are moving towards an omnichannel model, by integrating online channels with a physical (or ‘offline’) store network. Logistics service providers, who used to be largely invisible to consumers, are becoming the primary point of contact in this omnichannel environment. To respond to this evolution, the logistics ind...

The attention for omnichannel retail has increased impressively in the last years, making it a buzz-word in business and research. Articles on the topic found on the scientific database Google Scholar emerged as from 2012 and have since then almost doubled every year. Omnichannel retail entails a strategy that integrates online and offline retail c...

PurposePassenger car occupancy has been falling for years. Partly empty vehicles on our road networks decrease passenger transport sustainability but also contain an opportunity for freight transport. Within Crowd logistics (CL), delivery operations are carried out by using passengers’ excess capacity on journeys that are already taking place, resu...

Although urban freight transport (UFT) is vital for importing and exporting necessary goods and waste, a number of negative sustainability impacts characterise the process. The relatively recent attention for UFT spurred the emergence of a variety of policy measures. Nevertheless, local authorities experience difficulties in choosing a successful s...

Several indicators have been established to monitor and evaluate the sustainability of cities. Logistics and related transportation activities are underrepresented in these established frameworks despite the substantial negative impact of urban freight transport (UFT) on the environment, society and economy. The result is the lack of an understandi...

The research proposed in this abstract aims to create an inclusive sustainability evaluation framework that is able to assess the impact of passenger and freight mobility on the urban quality of life. This impact is stressed, as mobility considerations are often excluded or simplified in general sustainability studies. Despite the growing attention...