Reducing food losses and carbon emission by using autonomous control - A simulation study of the intelligent container

During the past decades bananas were imported to Europe in reefer vessels. Often, these vessels returned to Central America empty. This resulted in high carbon emissions and high costs. Therefore, importers switched to reefer containers which are shipped to Europe by liner cargo services. However, the amount of spoiled bananas increased with that change. Now a research project has developed the so called "Intelligent Container". This Intelligent Container is able to calculate the green life of its cargo and this leads to the feasibility of quality driven distribution. Thus, the losses of bananas should be decreased and both transport costs and carbon emissions be reduced even further. In this article we focus on the reduction of the food losses and the carbon emissions. To find the level of the reduction we conducted a computational simulation study. We used an existing distribution network and assumed that all shipped containers were "intelligent". Following the idea of the "Internet of Things" and "Autonomous Logistics" we developed an algorithm which enabled each container to make its own decisions, e.g. which route to take and to which customer it should be transported. The article describes this approach and the results of the simulation study. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.