An urban freight transport information system: The OTUC-Lima observatory

Urban freight transport in emerging megacities is characterized by high operational complexity, fragmented data sources, and significant information asymmetries between public authorities and private operators. In cities such as Lima, these challenges are intensified by the rapid expansion of e-commerce, which increases demand for fast, traceable deliveries while amplifying congestion and environmental externalities. This paper presents the design and implementation of the Urban Freight Transport Observatory of Metropolitan Lima (OTUC-Lima), a data-intensive decision-support information system developed to support urban freight governance. OTUC-Lima integrates heterogeneous data sources—including high-frequency GPS traces from freight vehicles, operational logistics data, census information, and land-use datasets—through an Extract–Load–Transform architecture combined with spatial–temporal processing. Using an 18-month dataset covering 652 freight vehicles, the study demonstrates how the system enables descriptive and diagnostic analytics through interactive dashboards that reveal freight mobility patterns and operational dynamics across the metropolitan area. From an Information Systems perspective, the paper conceptualizes urban freight observatories as socio-technical infrastructures that transform fragmented logistics data into actionable intelligence for data-driven urban freight governance in complex metropolitan contexts.