Motivation

The planning of transport capacities under demand fluctuations represents one of the central challenges in the transportation sector-both in freight and passenger transport. In passenger transport, factors such as demographic developments, mobility behavior, and technological innovations significantly influence demand, whereas in freight transport, economic conditions, structural change, and globalization are the primary sources of uncertainty (Asgarpour et al., 2023). The consequences of these uncertainties range from suboptimal capacity utilization and increased costs to supply bottlenecks or overcapacity. Consequently, methods from Operations Research (OR) are increasingly being applied in both sectors to enable robust and efficient planning decisions. However, the requirements, modeling approaches, and objectives often differ substantially between freight and passenger transport, for example with respect to the importance of time windows, flexibility, price sensitivity, or service quality. To date, a systematic comparison of the OR methods proposed in the literature for addressing demand uncertainty in both sectors has rarely been conducted.

Objective

The aim of this master’s thesis is to conduct a systematic literature review that examines and compares OR methods for transport planning under demand uncertainty in both freight and passenger transport. The focus lies on the identification and classification of modeling approaches used in the scientific literature-for instance, stochastic optimization, robust optimization, or hybrid methods. The respective strengths and weaknesses of these methods are to be analyzed in the context of both transport types, particularly with regard to the modeling of uncertainty, objective functions (e.g., costs, capacity utilization, service level), the consideration of overbooking strategies or flexibility options, and practical applicability. The goal is to identify commonalities and differences in methodological approaches as well as open research questions, and to derive recommendations for the application of specific OR methods in the two sectors.

Literature

• Asgarpour, S., Hartmann, A., Gkiotsalitis, K., & Neef, R. (2023). Scenario-Based Strategic Modeling of Road Transport Demand and Performance. Transportation Research Record, 2677(5), 1415-1440. https://doi.org/10.1177/03611981221143377
• Kitchenham, B., Charters, S. (2007): Guidelines for performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering. In: Keele University and Durham University Joint Report, EBSE-2007-01.
• Durach, Christian F.; Kembro, Joakim; Wieland, Andreas (2017): A New Paradigm for Systematic Literature Reviews in Supply Chain Management. Journal of Supply Chain Management 53(4), 67–85. https://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12145

General Conditions

Basic knowledge of Operations Research is required, as the thesis necessitates a critical examination of mathematical models and optimization techniques.

If you are interested in writing this thesis, please send your transcript of records to Yuerui Tang. In a meeting, the modalities and focus of the work can be discussed. You can start your work asap.