On deploying eCOmpass: A decision support tool for environmentally friendly retail locations

Much focus in the joint retailing and transportation domain has been on the transition to e-tailing and the reformation of supply-chain logistics. However, traditional retailing, where consumers visit stores for shopping still dominates and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Retailers continuously expand, contract, and reconfigure their store network for strategic reasons. This paper reports on a project aiming to facilitate the incorporation of environmental consequences into the retailer’s reconfiguration decision process. The paper contributes by providing insights and implementation strategies for deploying eCOmpass, leveraging high resolution spatial data to quantify emissions and optimize facility locations. It describes the design and deployment process of eCOmpass, an online decision support tool that enables retailers to estimate the change in transportation-related CO 2 emissions caused by a reconfiguration of their store network. This description encompasses the judgmental choices of data acquisition, optimization technology, and user interface.