Call for paper: AI, Net Zero, and Resilience in Transport and Logistics

AI, Net Zero, and Resilience in Transport and Logistics

Transport and logistics systems face concurrent pressures to decarbonize rapidly, become more efficient, and withstand mounting disruption risk. In the European Union, the European Climate Law makes climate neutrality a legally binding target by 2050. It also sets targets for net greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030, which raises the bar for all mobility subsectors. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency (IEA) analysis shows that reaching net zero by mid-century requires faster uptake of clean technologies and operational change across energy-using sectors. In transport, CO₂ must fall by more than 3 percent each year to 2030 under the IEA Net Zero pathway. This pace will not be met solely through incremental efficiency improvements.

At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed structural vulnerabilities in global supply chains, sharpening attention on resilience as a performance criterion alongside cost and speed. Evidence from OECD analyses documents early pandemic shortages and propagation effects across global value chains, which renewed debates about diversification and redundancy. Policymakers and industry therefore seek strategies that jointly reduce emissions, maintain service quality, and limit the social and economic costs of disruption.

Digitalization is often identified as an enabler of these aims, through analytics, sensing, connectivity, and automation, which can increase asset utilization and support low-carbon operations. Building on this, the International Transport Forum’s “Decarbonising Transport initiative” offers tools to select CO₂ mitigation measures, while the OECD’s “Going Digital” framework provides the policy complement. A growing scholarly base has examined discrete elements of this agenda, including the application of artificial intelligence to routing, terminal operations, demand forecasting, and risk assessment. Yet, the literature on AI methods, net-zero pathways, and resilience design often proceeds in parallel rather than through an integrated framework, which limits the ability to surface complementarities or trade-offs across objectives.

This special issue, “AI, Net Zero, and Resilience in Transport and Logistics,” invites contributions that explicitly bridge these themes. We welcome contributions that identify causal or associational relationships between AI or digital tools and net-zero and resilience outcomes. Suitable methods include natural experiments, randomized or field trials, difference-in-differences or instrumental variables, validated simulations or digital twins, and interpretable or causal machine learning. Priority applications include low-carbon service design, network optimization under energy and reliability constraints, predictive maintenance with life-cycle accounting, integration of renewable energy and smart charging in terminals and urban logistics, and decision support that prices resilience benefits.

We seek studies that show what works, by how much, and under what conditions. Contributions should document data provenance and preprocessing, provide code or a containerized workflow when permitted, quantify uncertainty, test transferability across time, sites, or modes, and specify the policy instruments or operating decisions implicated. We especially encourage studies from low- and middle-income contexts, small island and landlocked states, and rapidly urbanizing corridors, where regulatory, market, and infrastructure conditions differ.

By assembling rigorous work at this intersection, the special issue maps where AI creates measurable decarbonization and resilience gains and what institutional arrangements can scale what works. The intended outcome will be a practice-oriented evidence base that supports decision-makers who must deliver lower emissions, reliable service, and equitable access within tight financial and political constraints.

List of topic areas

Across all topics, we welcome studies that use artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies in logistics to advance Net Zero objectives or strengthen supply-chain resilience
Hydrogen, e-fuels, and sustainable aviation fuel logistics, storage, and lifecycle accounting
Fleet electrification and smart-charging schedules, including vehicle-to-grid integration
Digital twins calibrated to real operations for co-optimizing emissions, cost, and recovery time
Scope-3 emissions measurement, data assimilation, and verification across supply chains
Demand forecasting, dynamic pricing, and incentives for low-carbon mode shift
Network and timetable optimization under energy and reliability constraints
Port, terminal, and warehouse operations that cut idle time and emissions
Climate-risk stress testing of corridors and hubs; appraisal of adaptation and hardening investments

Submissions Information

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Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else while under review for this journal.