Towards decentralized electronic market places and agent-based freight exchanges for multimodal transports

The research into more intelligent transport systems always seeks ways to organize transports and their communications more efficiently and sustainably. An idea emerging consistently in this context is the more efficient configuration and coordination of multimodal transports. Different projects, like e.g. LOGFOR, CODE24 and CENTRAL EUROPE, make efforts to achieve progress in this area. Within the framework of the CODE24 project the prototype ORFE of an online rail freight exchange has been developed at the Institute for Production and Industrial Information Management of the University of Duisburg-Essen. The positive feedback within and outside of the project shows the actual demand for an online support of the service processes within the industry. For instance, the establishment of the first dedicated online rail freight exchanges in the year 2013 trace back directly to the efforts of the project partners within the CODE24 project. It is described how this prototype is able to facilitate contact between potential business partners and it is shown how the implementation of the prototype and the research into freight exchanges led the authors of this paper to a new market place concept: Agent-based Freight Exchanges. The paper shows how these yet to be implemented, highly automated and interconnected market places will alleviate problems commonly associated with existing intermediaries and provide support for decentralized and autonomous software agents to perform contractually binding auctions of multimodal freight transport services utilizing a two-sided combinatorial auction model. Finally, an outlook on prospective concepts which support the negotiation of contracts for multimodal transport services using multi-agent systems is given.