Evaluation of Intermodal Transport Routes: Environment and Biodiversity Perspectives

Intermodal transportation integrates multiple modes of transport, enhancing logistics efficiency and reducing environmental footprints. It alleviates road congestion, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and supports sustainable economic growth. One of the main issues in intermodal transport planning is the selection of adequate routes, especially in terms of their impact on the environment. Strategic route planning can mitigate transportation impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, preventing habitat fragmentation and wildlife disruption. Thus, incorporating ecological considerations in transport planning is vital for sustainability. This paper aims to define a framework for evaluating and ranking intermodal transport routes based on their environmental and biodiversity impacts, promoting resilient and environmentally responsible transportation systems. For solving the defined problem this paper proposes a geographic information system (GIS)-based multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework. It employs a Comprehensive distance-based Ranking (COBRA) MCDM method that uses GIS-based input data to evaluate alternative intermodal transport routes and to rank them. The proposed framework is tested on a real-life case study, i.e., on evaluating and comparing intermodal transport routes between North European ports and North Italy intermodal terminals, performing on two Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) corridors. The results indicate that the Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor between the port of Hamburg and the intermodal terminal Verona Quadrante Europa is more favorable regarding environmental impact and biodiversity protection. The main contributions of the study include the development of a framework for route evaluation and the establishment of criteria that can be used for evaluating and ranking routes.