TRANSIT – A model for simulating infrastructure and policy interventions in agriculture logistics: Application to the northern Australia beef industry

•Australian agriculture has long distance and high cost supply chains.•TRANSIT – a GIS tool to evaluate infrastructure investments and policy changes.•Application to northern Australia livestock industry.•Transport cost savings of up to $15 million in some locations. Australia’s agriculture industry...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computers and electronics in agriculture 2015-06, Vol.114, p.32-42
Main Authors: Higgins, Andrew, McFallan, Stephen, Laredo, Luis, Prestwidge, Di, Stone, Peter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Agriculture transport
Australia
Costs
Infrastructure investment
Investments
Livestock logistics
Policies
Policy simulation
Roads
Simulation
Transit
Vehicle routing
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Summary:•Australian agriculture has long distance and high cost supply chains.•TRANSIT – a GIS tool to evaluate infrastructure investments and policy changes.•Application to northern Australia livestock industry.•Transport cost savings of up to $15 million in some locations. Australia’s agriculture industry, particularly in the north, is characterised by supply chains of long travel distances, often in excess of 2500km 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 Australia livestock industry, consisting of 12 million cattle across 10,000 enterprises and 89,000 unique trips between these enterprises. Its ability to estimate the transport benefits from road upgrades, new processing facilities and biosecurity changes are shown using three priority case studies identified by industry and government.
ISSN:0168-1699
1872-7107
DOI:10.1016/j.compag.2015.03.018