Measuring the Sustainability of Air Freight System using integrated Sustainable Urban Transport Index (iSUTI)

Abstract

The growth of e-commerce is contributing to the volume of freight, especially with broad service that logistics companies have offered. Airlines, forwarders, integrators and logistics service provider are trying to increase their market share by developing strategies to attract as many e-commerce activities as possible. Compared to sea freight and trucking, airfreight is the first choice that consumers tend to choose when it comes to time-varying delivery. However, airfreight is the highest contributor to the carbon emissions in transportation industry despite its ability to be the fastest mode of delivery. Based on the trends in the transportation industry, the sector utilized nearly 36.4% of the natural resources and has been reliant on it for decades. Lack of sustainable technology can impose inefficiency and insufficient infrastructure. In this paper, integrated framework is introduced to measure overall sustainability performance of an air freight services provided by logistics companies in Malaysia. Nine indicators from three sustainability pillars are included in the assessment and overall score of the iSUTI is used to determine the sustainability level of the sustainable development of the respective companies. iSUTI is proved to be able to measure the performance as well as providing the highlights for improvement towards sustainability.