Resilience Analytics of a Future Supply Chain for Aviation Biofuels

Abstract

Capacity-building plans for transportation systems must be resilient to disruptions and erroneous assumptions to protect performance outcomes as well as schedule and cost. An example is the future supply chain of aviation biofuels for industry, government, and military applications. The challenges include balancing the aims and assumptions of diverse stakeholders, including regulators, agencies, manufacturers, airlines, fuel companies, and agricultural and husbandry producers. Resilience analytics of the strategic plans should characterize both the influential trends and stressors and the robust initiatives. This paper demonstrates resilience analytics to address varied, evolving, and potentially conflicting stakeholder preferences in the life cycle of supply chains for aviation biofuels. Heterogeneous feedstocks can be converted to aviation biofuel, although several are more attractive across technological, environmental, and economic criteria. The choice of feedstocks for conversion to biofuel depends on balancing desired outcomes, including life-cycle costs, availabilities, proximities, environmental impacts, and the like. Resilience analytics enables prioritization of feedstocks and other supply chain initiatives, with prioritization that varies by scenario. A technology road map for near- and midterm investment horizons to establish aviation biofuels is described. Poultry waste products are explored by using the above methods for a particular region in the mid-Atlantic area of the United States.