INTRODUCTION
\label{introduction}
The increasing process of urbanization worldwide leads to higher levels
of transport activity related to cargo distribution and service
provision. This phenomenon may generate social, environmental and
economic impacts, mainly related to traffic congestion and noise,
pollutants and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, as well as a greater risk
of traffic accidents (Mckinnon et al., 2010; Oliveira et al., 2015;
Muñoz-Villamizar et al., 2017). In order to mitigate these effects,
cities need to advance their transformations and allow the innovative
exploration of urban freight operations, especially in relation to the
development of new technologies (Bjorklund and Gustafsson, 2015) and
stimulating the adoption of eletric vehicles (Rezvani et al., 2015;
Weiss et al., 2015).
Moreover, the consequence of these problems is potentialized in the last
mile distribution. Besides, it is in this stage that the largest share
of the logistic cost is evidenced (Roumboutsos et al., 2014). Therefore,
suppliers and stakeholders are encouraged to minimize their transport
costs while attempting to reduce the social, environmental and economic
impact of their operations, meanwhile maintaining a satisfactory level
of service (Rodrigues et al., 2015). Consequently, they quest for
solutions through a greater cooperation and integration of their
activities, adopting new technologies and resources efficiently
(Steadieseifi et al., 2014).
According to the Urban Freight Research Roadmap (ALICE / ERTRAC Urban
mobility WG, 2015), the future of urban cargo transportation will be
influenced by the advent of new technologies, and thus it becomes
essential to develop strategic initiatives and researches which
contribute for a better understanding of this phenomenon, as well as for
identifying opportunities in this field of knowledge. In this context,
this paper aims to identify, through a systematic literature review, new
forms of operations and technologies in urban freight transport,
especially identifying the main type of vehicles used for the last mile
distribution of urban freight. The secondary objectives of the paper
include identifying the main characteristics of these vehicles, the
barriers, opportunities and benefits (economic, social and
environmental) related to their use, as well as the range of the
distribution operation.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The next section
details the methodology and research protocol used for the systematic
literature review. Section 3 presents the systematic analysis of the
literature that is consistent with the proposed research protocol, with
emphasis on the planning, execution and disclosure stages. Section 4
presents the analysis of the results and a theoretical discussion.
Finally, in Section 5, the conclusions, limitations and recommendations
for future studies are presented, as well as highlights of the research
path moving forward.