Transit–a model for simulating infrastructure and policy interventions in agriculture logistics: application to the Northern Australia beef industry

摘要: Australia’s agriculture industry, particularly in the north, is characterised by supply chains of long travel distances, often in excess of 2500 km and costing up to 35% of farm gate price. Such travel distances increase the vulnerability of the industry to climatic variability and extreme events. Infrastructure investments in roads, bridges, processors and storage, along with changes in policy, have the potential to substantially reduce costs and increase resilience of the agriculture industries. In this paper, we outline the model, TRAnsport Network Strategic Investment Tool (TRANSIT) which is based on ArcGIS, and utilizes the Origin to Destination Cost Matrix solver within the Network Analyst toolkit. TRANSIT estimates the transport costs for all movements between enterprises, accommodating road conditions, vehicle types, vehicle access restrictions and regulatory requirements. TRANSIT was applied to the northern …