Project overview
The Human Worlds Festival is the University of Southampton's annual celebration of Humanities. It is a free series of events for members of the public, including families, to explore the humanities and beyond. In the past years, most of the events took place at the University's Avenue Campus, which is the home of the Faculty of Humanities, including disciplines such as Archaeology, English, Film, History, Modern Languages, Music and Philosophy. In 2019, for the first time, the festival took place at the Southampton Cultural Quarter and was organised by the University of Southampton Public Engagement with Research Unit in partnership with John Hansard Gallery and City Eye.
The TRG exhibit was ‘I want it, and I want it now’ – what are the transport impacts of your on-line shopping habits? This interactive exhibit used an agent-based model to replicate the on-street activity of parcel delivery couriers operating across the EC3 postcode area of London. Players are asked to state:
i) how many parcel delivery vans they think visit their house,
ii) the number of parcels they might expect to receive and,
iii) how many deliveries are made by people on foot in a typical week.
This was done via a linked tablet, and the information was used to run the model using a historical data set of carrier parcel delivery data as a base to replicate and project the delivery characteristics chosen across the EC3 area of London over a single day, if all consignees on the rounds exhibited the same behaviour. The model showed a visualisation of the vans moving around the network with deliveries being made by drivers and foot porters. Locations receiving deliveries had parcels appear at those points with delivery vehicles and porters moving around between them. At the end of the simulation, the model showed the collective impacts of the day’s delivery activity in terms of the numbers of van-kilometres driven, porter kilometres walked and the CO2 produced by the delivery activity in terms of the numbers of trees that would have to be planted to offset the impact.
To aid discussion with players, two pull-up banners were created to accompany the simulation. One framed the current problems with home delivery in the form of a cartoon, particularly the increasing growth of ‘same-day’ delivery where a consignee can receive a package within a few hours of ordering and the negative transport impacts of such activity. The other showed the ways in which delivery companies are adapting their operations to better manage parcel deliveries using things like foot and cycle couriers, micro-consolidation points and in some cases, drones.
The TRG exhibit was ‘I want it, and I want it now’ – what are the transport impacts of your on-line shopping habits? This interactive exhibit used an agent-based model to replicate the on-street activity of parcel delivery couriers operating across the EC3 postcode area of London. Players are asked to state:
i) how many parcel delivery vans they think visit their house,
ii) the number of parcels they might expect to receive and,
iii) how many deliveries are made by people on foot in a typical week.
This was done via a linked tablet, and the information was used to run the model using a historical data set of carrier parcel delivery data as a base to replicate and project the delivery characteristics chosen across the EC3 area of London over a single day, if all consignees on the rounds exhibited the same behaviour. The model showed a visualisation of the vans moving around the network with deliveries being made by drivers and foot porters. Locations receiving deliveries had parcels appear at those points with delivery vehicles and porters moving around between them. At the end of the simulation, the model showed the collective impacts of the day’s delivery activity in terms of the numbers of van-kilometres driven, porter kilometres walked and the CO2 produced by the delivery activity in terms of the numbers of trees that would have to be planted to offset the impact.
To aid discussion with players, two pull-up banners were created to accompany the simulation. One framed the current problems with home delivery in the form of a cartoon, particularly the increasing growth of ‘same-day’ delivery where a consignee can receive a package within a few hours of ordering and the negative transport impacts of such activity. The other showed the ways in which delivery companies are adapting their operations to better manage parcel deliveries using things like foot and cycle couriers, micro-consolidation points and in some cases, drones.
