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Urban Freight Lab

Research Topic: Supply Chain Management

Supply chain management is the management of the entire production flow of goods and services, including all the processes of turning raw materials into final products.

Dr. Anne Goodchild

Dr. Anne Goodchild
Dr. Anne Goodchild
  • Founding Director, Urban Freight Lab
  • Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
annegood@uw.edu  |  206-543-3747  |  Wilson Ceramics Lab 103
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  • Urban goods delivery systems and land use
  • Logistics hubs and ports
  • Sustainable freight transportation systems
  • Supply chain management and freight transportation

Dr. Anne Goodchild is interested in the intersection between supply chain management and freight transportation. As an example of this, recent research is evaluating the changing nature of shopping and implications for goods delivery on CO2 emissions, local pollutants, and vehicle miles travelled. Her interest in economic and environmental sustainability is also demonstrated by her work looking at CO2 emissions in strategic routing and schedule planning in urban pick-up and delivery systems. Dr. Goodchild’s work in understanding supply chains, as they relate to the transport system, is demonstrated by her research funded by the SHRP2 freight data and modeling program, NCFRP 20, the FHWA’s Behavioral based National Freight Demand Model, and surveys and analysis funded by both the Washington and Oregon Departments of Transportation.

  • Innovation in Education Award, Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Transportation Education Council (2021)
  • Outstanding Researcher Award, Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans) (2021)
  • Outstanding Mentor Award, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (2020)
  • Person of the Year, Transportation Club of Seattle (2017)
  • Allan and Inger Osberg Endowed Professorship (2012 – 2016)
  • Community of Innovators Junior Faculty Research Award, College of Engineering (2012)
  • 2nd Prize, College-Industry Council on MH Education Outstanding Material Handling and Logistics paper (2008)
  • Dissertation Prize Honorable Mention, INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics (2006)
  • PRISMS Presentation Competition Finalist, Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (2003)
  • Ph.D., Civil and Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley (2005)
    (Dissertation: Crane Double Cycling in Container Ports: Algorithms, Evaluation, and Planning)
  • M.S., Civil and Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley (2003)
  • B.S., Mathematics, UC Davis (1995)

Dr. Anne Goodchild leads the University of Washington’s academic and research efforts in the area of supply chain, logistics, and freight transportation. She is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Founding Director of both the Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics online Master’s degree program and the Urban Freight Lab (UFL).

Under Goodchild’s leadership, the UFL coined the increasingly used term “Final 50 Feet” and defined it as the last leg of the supply chain for urban deliveries—including finding parking, moving items from a delivery vehicle, navigating traffic, sidewalks, intersections, bike lanes, and building security, and ending with the recipient. In addition to being key to customer satisfaction, this final segment is both the most expensive (where an estimated 25-50% of total supply chain costs are incurred) and most time-consuming part of the delivery process—and ripe for improvement. One of the hurdles in the final 50 feet is that many different parties are involved—city departments of transportation, delivery carriers, property owners, residents, and consumers—making a collaborative effort between sectors essential for developing mutually beneficial solutions. Using a systems engineering approach, the UFL has completed innovative research projects that provide foundational data and proven strategies, such as:

Dr. Goodchild’s contributions to transportation engineering in the U.S. and abroad have been significant. She is an expert in international border and port operations and has been instrumental in bringing supply chain concepts to freight model architectures. She has worked at the forefront of GPS data applications, identifying observable transportation characteristics that statistically predict transportation behavior.

She is the author or co-author of more than 100 research publications, and serves as associate editor for the peer-reviewed scientific journal Transportation Letters. From 2016 to 2018 she chaired the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Transportation Research Board (TRB) Freight and Marine Chairs group, the top national research organization in her field. She teaches logistics and analysis, global trade, transportation & logistics management, and advises graduate students in transportation engineering, and has won several teaching and research awards.

Dr. Goodchild is the recipient of numerous research grants, including recent awards from the U.S. Department of Transportation, PacTrans (Regional University Transportation Center for Federal Region 10), Seattle Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration’s Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2), TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program, and the Washington and Oregon State Departments of Transportation.

Dr. Goodchild holds both a doctorate (2005) and a master’s degree (2003) in civil and environmental engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor’s degree (with high honors) in mathematics from University of California, Davis. Before earning her Ph.D. she worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and Applied Decision Analysis Inc. in Europe and North America designing efficient airline schedules and optimizing research portfolios. She joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty at the University of Washington in 2005. In addition, she holds a Visiting Professorship at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and a Research Affiliateship at Urban@UW (an initiative of the Office of Research and CoMotion at the University of Washington).

  • Adjunct Professor, Industrial & Systems Engineering, University of Washington
  • Visiting Professor, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg (Sweden)
  • Affiliate, Urban @ UW, University of Washington
  • Co-Chair, Aurora Urban Freight Consortium
  • Member, NECTAR (The Network on European Communications and Transport Activity Research) Cluster 3 Organizing Committee, Logistics and Freight
  • Member, Washington State Freight Advisory Committee (Chair, 2011-2013)
  • Organizing Committee, International Urban Freight Conference (I-NUF), Long Beach, CA (2017, 2019, 2021)
  • Associate Editor, Transportation Research Record (TRR) (2019-2020)
  • Member, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Transportation Research Board (TRB), Taskforce on Development of Freight Fluidity Performance Measures (2016-2019)
  • Group Chair, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Transportation Research Board (TRB), Freight Group (2016-2019)
  • Chair, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Transportation Research Board (TRB), Freight and Marine Chairs Group (2016-2018)
  • Chair, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Transportation Research Board (TRB) Standing Committee on Intermodal Freight Transportation (AT045) (2013-2016)
  • Member, National Academy of Sciences, Committee for Study of Freight Rail Transportation and Regulation (2014-2015)
  • Editor, International Journal of Logistics and Transportation Research (2013-2014)
  • Member, Puget Sound Regional Council Freight Advisory Panel (2008-2011)

Development and Testing of Innovative Non-Invasive Container Screening Methods in the Supply Chain Defense Lab

This project will develop and test innovative, non-invasive container screening methods in the new Supply Chain Defense Lab (SCDLab). The SCDLab research partnership brings the Urban Freight Lab’s deep logistics expertise, global supply chain companies such as SSA Marine and Expeditors International of Washington, together with the UW Center for Conservation Biology Forensic and Detection Dog Programs to solve global supply chain security problems that are priorities for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

This program is funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) which is providing 10 years of research funding to Texas A&M University to lead a consortium of U.S. academic institutions—including UFL and Conservation Biology—in a new national Center of Excellence (COE) for Cross-Border Threat Screening and Supply Chain Defense (CBTS). S&T will provide CBTS with a $3.85 million grant for its first operating year in 2019.

The initial research project will develop and test the effectiveness and efficiency of rapid-throughput canine detection methods and protocols to search containers for biologic contraband at the port.

As a hub of international commerce, Washington State provides an excellent environment to launch this project. The NW Seaport Alliance (Ports of Seattle and Tacoma) manages the nation’s third largest container port operation. In addition to serving as a global maritime gateway for goods entering the U.S, Washington State has high-volume border crossings that connect NW Washington and the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, collectively known as the Cascade Gateway. The Gateway is among the busiest and most economically important along the entire northern border. Once in transit, illegal and counterfeit goods, and goods potentially introducing biological threats and vectors for disease, are easily concealed because of the scale of global supply chains. Some of the world’s most endangered species, forests and marine ecosystems are being targeted by transnational criminal organizations, with serious impacts on national and local economies, ecology, global health, and political stability around the world.

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