INFORMS 2025 INFORMS 2025 Atlanta, Georgia INSPIRE Lab participated in INFORMS 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia, presenting research on sustainable freight systems, hydrogen supply chains, and infrastructure planning for transportation decarbonization. The conference brought together researchers and practitioners from the operations research community to exchange ideas on optimization, infrastructure systems, and data-driven decision-making. Conference Presentation Co-Optimizing Freight and H₂ Logistics for Regional Decarbonization Presenter: Mohammad Reza Ghorbanali Zadegan This study investigates the joint planning of hydrogen production, distribution, and refueling infrastructure to support the decarbonization of heavy-duty freight transportation. The research develops a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) framework that simultaneously optimizes electrolyzer siting, hydrogen production capacity, hydrogen flows, and hydrogen refueling station deployment. Using freight flow data and industrial hydrogen demand in the Northeastern United States, the model evaluates how shared hydrogen infrastructure can support both industrial users and fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) freight systems. The results show that coordinated planning significantly improves spatial alignment between production and demand, reduces hydrogen delivery distances, and increases infrastructure utilization. Sensitivity analyses further demonstrate strong economies of scale as FCEV adoption increases. Higher penetration levels lead to expanded refueling capacity, shorter supply distances, and lower marginal costs per freight ton-kilometer. This research was conducted as part of the NSF-funded SH₂INE project, in collaboration with researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Dr. Chiara Lo Prete.
