Transportation

With the evolution of emerging technologies, transportation systems are becoming increasingly complex. At the same time, the advent of grand environmental challenges, such as climate change, requires researchers and practitioners to develop new transportation strategies that ensure a high degree of energy efficiency. Due to their immanent capabilities to study the behavior of complex systems over time, simulation methodologies can provide valuable assets to determine the energy efficiency on a transportation system. Thus, this chapter reviews the current state of the art regarding energy-related simulation research in the transportation sector. It outlines the status quo of energy-related simulation research and provides an overview on the most common simulation methods used for analyzing energy-related transportation aspects such as vehicle emissions. Moreover, to demonstrate the practical applicability of simulation in this domain, two exemplary use cases are elaborated, employing an agent-based modeling technique to assess emission implications resulting from different freight and grocery transportation strategies. The results of the use cases show that simulation can be a powerful methodology to evaluate energy-related transportation effects, ultimately supporting more informed theory construction and strategy formulation incentives.