Towards a reference architecture for fuel-based carbon management systems in the logistics industry

The current practice in the logistics industry is to calculate the carbon footprint of transportation activities based on the distance covered, using long-term fuel consumption averages per kilometer. However, fuel consumption may actually vary over time, because of differences in road characteristics, traffic situations, driving behavior, etc. Therefore, distance-based emission calculations are not accurate. Our approach is fuel-based and it calculates transport greenhouse gas emissions by obtaining the actual fuel consumption during trips via board computers installed in vehicles. Thus, we propose an architecture for a fuel-based Logistics Carbon Management System (LCMS) that monitors and collects real-time data about the fuel consumption during trips, and, consequently, calculates detailed and accurate carbon footprints of transportation services. Furthermore, this system is integrated with the logistics service provider’s business processes and with typical software applications (e.g., Transport Management Systems and Board Computers). We validate and implement the proposed architecture by means of a prototype.