Decentralized intelligence in freight transport—A critical review

• A comprehensive overview of research on decentralized freight intelligence.
• An analysis of current assumptions of the benefits of decentralized freight intelligence.
• Suggestions for future research to adopt a critical, action oriented research design.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a research outlook on the concept of decentralized freight intelligence, i.e. autonomous freight making localized routing decisions. A review of research literature on decentralized intelligence in freight transport serves as the foundation of the analysis. The analysis reveals a scarcity of scientific evidence to suggest a successful introduction of decentralized freight intelligence. Among numerous conceptual findings, the analysis reveals a dearth of research on the clear and present challenges of introducing and adopting decentralized freight concepts in contemporary multi organizational open freight systems. For practitioners this paper provides useful input on future ICT development in the transport field. In particular, due to the lack of guidance on adoption of decentralized freight, a focus on non-networked benefits of information technology is to be recommended. Given the large number of projects, papers and various initiatives related to decentralized freight intelligence, this paper, to the authors’ best knowledge, provides a novel technology adoption perspective on decentralized freight intelligence research.