Urban freight establishment and tour based surveys for policy oriented modelling

Commonly collected data about urban freight does not provide appropriate input to urban freight transport policy-oriented models. According to us, a policy-oriented model (Ambrosini et al., 2008) is a data-adjusted model, oriented towards operational policy analysis. The aim is to simulate freight distribution within urban areas for evaluation, control and design of the urban freight transport system. Policy-oriented models help public decision making about the main stakes associated with an urban sustainable development. These models have to simulate the present situation properly enough to provide a good quality forecast to satisfy both local urban and global environmental issues. Data collected in order to calibrate those models have to fit into the methods carried out for their working. So we propose first doing a critical investigation of different possible methodological approaches for urban goods movement surveying. Secondly we present some recent approaches staying more close to reality, stressing on the necessary quality of data to improve the reliability of the results. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved