Nagurney is panelist at Future Urban Transport Symposium in Sweden

Anna Nagurney, the John F. Smith Memorial Professor of Operations Management at the Isenberg School of Management, who is also a visiting professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, as part of her sabbatical, was a panelist at the Future Urban Transport Symposium held Oct. 15-17.

The symposium took place in Gothenburg, with the theme "Urban Freight for Livable Cities." Participation in the symposium, which convened academics, corporate representatives, policy-makers and practitioners from six continents, along with a journalist, was by invitation only.

Presently, 50 percent of the world's population resides in urban areas with the growth expected to be 70 percent by 2050. This poses great challenges for freight logistics in terms of efficiency as well as sustainability issues. Although passenger transport is fairly well understood freight logistics tends to be invisible. Hence, acquiring the data for modeling and determining how to make better use of the capacity for urban freight with smarter solutions to sharing space in cities is becoming ever more important.

Nagurney spoke at the closing panel with the theme of "Forward Looking" and discussed both short-term possible solutions as well as long-term ones. She fccused on the relevant research being conducted at the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School on sustainable supply chain networks with applications ranging from food supply chains to healthcare ones, including medical nuclear supply chains.

Sponsors of the symposium were Volvo, VREF and the city of Gothenburg, emphasizing the necessity of private and public partnerships for collaboration and the assessment of trade-offs.