Degree Project Level: Master’s CO2-efficient retail locations: Building a web-based DSS by the Waterfall Methodology Author: Julateh K. Mulbah & Tilahun Gebreslassie Kahsay Supervisor: Kenneth Carling, Xiaoyun Zhao Examiner: Moudud Alam Subject/main field of study: Microdata Analysis Course code: MI4001 Credits: 30 ECTS Date of examination: June 09,2021 At Dalarna University it is possible to publish the student thesis in full text in DiVA. The publishing is open access, which means the work will be freely accessible to read and download on the internet. This will significantly increase the dissemination and visibility of the student thesis. Open access is becoming the standard route for spreading scientific and academic information on the internet. Dalarna University recommends that both researchers as well as students publish their work open access. I give my/we give our consent for full text publishing (freely accessible on the internet, open access): Yes ☒ No ☐ Dalarna University – SE-791 88 Falun – Phone +4623-77 80 00 Abstract: Several studies have been carryout on finding optimal locations to minimize CO2 emissions from the last mile distribution perspective. In conjunction with that, there has been no study conducted in Sweden that provides a decision support system to compute the transport consequences of the modifications in the retailer’s store network. This thesis did used the following steps: requirement analysis, system design, implementation and testing to build a prototype decision support system that is to help retailers find optimal locations for a new retail store. This thesis provided a subsequent answer as to which data are needed along with the rightful user interface for said decision support system. Subsequently, this thesis does present a decision support system prototype from which some recommendations were provided as to what skills set and tools are needed for the management and maintenance of said decision support system. The primary data used during this thesis is the Dalarna municipalities, six selected retailer’s stores networks and the Dalarna Road network geo-data (Longitude and latitude). This thesis does conclude that it is possible to integrate an optimization model within the Django framework using a geo data to build a decision support system. Keywords: Optimal location, Statistical modeling, Web development and P- median model i Acknowledgements: We like to express appreciation to all those who supported us in this thesis development from the inception up to the final presentation. We humbly thank our supervisors: Kenneth Carling and Xiaoyun Zhao for their undeniable support and guidance. ii Table of Contents: Abstract: .............................................................................................................................................. i Acknowledgements: ........................................................................................................................... ii List of Figures: .................................................................................................................................. iv List of Tables: ................................................................................................................................... iv List of Equations: .............................................................................................................................. iv 1: Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Research Background ............................................................................................................... 1 1.2 General Research Problem and Research Goal ........................................................................ 2 1.3 Research Objective and Research Questions............................................................................ 3 1.4 The Scope of the thesis ............................................................................................................. 4 1.5 Research Disposition ................................................................................................................ 4 2: Related work and derived insights ................................................................................................. 6 3: Methodology, input data, methods, and software tools .................................................................. 9 3.1 Description of Empirical Data and Study Population............................................................... 9 3.1.0 Data Source Description ........................................................................... 9 3.1.1 Study Population and Data ....................................................................... 9 3.1.2 The Borlange Residence Volunteer Data ............................................... 12 3.2 Methodology and Methods ..................................................................................................... 13 3.2.0 System Design and Model Formulations ............................................... 15 3.2.1 Model Formulation ................................................................................. 15 3.2.2 Model Interpretation ............................................................................... 17 3.2.3 Emission Based P-median Method ......................................................... 17 3.3 DSS Implementation .............................................................................................................. 19 4: Data quality and processing ......................................................................................................... 23 4.1 Data Pre-processing ................................................................................................................ 23 5: An illustration of the prototype of the DSS .................................................................................. 26 6: Thesis discussion and future work ............................................................................................... 31 7: Limitations ................................................................................................................................... 33 8: Conclusions .................................................................................................................................. 34 References ........................................................................................................................................ 35 Appendix .......................................................................................................................................... 38 Appendix A: The Registration Form for Retailers ....................................................................... 38 Appendix C: Finding optimal location. ........................................................................................ 38 Appendix D Result from finding optimal location using the DSS. .............................................. 39 Appendix E System Architecture ................................................................................................. 40 Appendix F A link to a short presentation of the prototype DSS ................................................. 40 iii List of Figures: Figure 1 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------11 Figure 2 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------12 Figure 3---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------19 Figure 4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------24 Figure 5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------25 Figure 6 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------26 Figure 7 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------28 Figure 8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------29 Figure 9 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------30 List of Tables: Table 1----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------9 Table 2---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------14 Table 3---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------16 Table 4---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------18 Table 5---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------20 Table 6-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------27-28 List of Equations: Equation 1------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------16 Equation 2------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------16 Equation 3------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------16 Equation 4------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------16