MSc Internship / Thesis: Urban Logistics Policy Analysis in Urban Strategy

  • 6 to 9 months
  • The Hague, Netherlands
  • Master student

Background

Scenexus develops Urban Strategy, an advanced digital twin platform used by cities and regions worldwide for large-scale scenario analysis across domains such as mobility, environment, energy, and climate.
Urban Strategy enables interactive exploration of policy and infrastructure scenarios using high-performance computing, supporting a broad set of mobility and impact indicators.

TU Delft has developed Mass-GT for logistics (freight transport modelling). Scenexus has strong mobility modelling capabilities in Urban Strategy and the ambition to extend Urban Strategy with advanced urban logistics modelling by implementing Mass-GT concepts and applying them to assess municipal policy questions (e.g., zero emission zones, delivery time restrictions, and road works/maintenance disruptions).

Your assignment

You will work on designing and demonstrating how Mass-GT-style logistics modelling can be applied inside (or connected to) Urban Strategy, and how it changes integrated policy outcomes. Concretely, you will work on:

  • Translating Mass-GT concepts into an implementable approach within Urban Strategy (e.g., data needs, interfaces, scenario parameters, outputs, validation approach).
  • Implementing a first integration/proof-of-concept workflow (e.g., coupling, module design, or pipeline) that enables logistics scenarios to be run and compared consistently within Urban Strategy’s scenario environment.
  • Designing and running research-driven use cases that quantify integrated impacts (logistics + broader mobility + environmental outcomes), including:
    • Integral impact of zero emission zones (fleet composition changes, routing, access constraints, emissions and system effects).
    • Integral impact of restricted delivery times / time windows (peaks, re-timing, congestion interactions, accessibility and emissions effects).
    • Impact of road maintenance / works on logistics (detours, reliability, network performance, spillovers to other modes and indicators).
  • Defining appropriate indicators and evaluation methods (e.g., network performance, accessibility, emissions, exposure, robustness/resilience) and documenting assumptions clearly.

Delivering a thesis report plus a demonstrator (model configuration + scenarios + results narrative) that can be reused for future city projects.

Depending on your interests, the thesis can focus on questions such as:

  • What is a pragmatic, defensible way to represent urban freight (demand and operations) in a city-scale digital twin used for policy evaluation?
  • How do logistics policies (ZEZ, time windows) interact with general mobility and network performance when analysed in an integrated scenario environment?

How should temporary disruptions (road works/maintenance) be represented to capture logistics impacts realistically at strategic scale?

What we offer

  • A cutting-edge logistics × digital twin research problem with direct real-world relevance for cities.
  • Real-world deployment context and policy-driven use cases in an interactive scenario platform.
  • Close supervision by Scenexus’ technical leadership and a collaborative start-up environment.
  • Room to shape the exact research direction (more methodological vs. more applied), depending on your thesis requirements and interests.
 

Interested?

Send your CV and motivation to Walter Lohman, CTO of Scenexus at walter.lohman@scenexus.com