Freight Distribution in Small Islands: Integration between Naval Services and Parcel Lockers

Freight transportation in urban areas represents an essential activity from the standpoint of economic development; recent years, spread e-commerce (also accelerated by COVID-19) has contributed to increasing demand for freight distribution over short distances. In most cities, approaches and measures are often based on new technologies. Nevertheless, today there contexts wherein delivery operations represent critical tasks be solved. Furthermore, low accessibility areas, such as small islands, present further problems due their exclusive dependence maritime links (and low-reliability services). This paper tackles this topic, formulating solving a problem linking shipping services with last-mile operated means automatic service (parcel lockers). A test application is proposed considering island Lipari archipelago Aeolian islands (Sicily, Southern Italy). The results show that type could reduce user’s waiting time when compared traditional home deliveries.