The Use of Drones in City Logistics—A Case Study Application

Abstract

The city logistics take a considerable part of the urban transportation. Inevitably, the last mile deliveries are partly responsible for degrading the environment. Towards more environmentally friendly city logistics the use of different means of transport has been tested; one among them is the drones. The aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the use of drones for the last mile deliveries. More specifically, to give insights into how the parcel distribution could be deployed within an urban environment with the use of drones. Data were collected from a transport operator and two scenarios were synthesized reflecting the current situation and the future one. An analysis of the stakeholders involved was performed and for the analysis of the scenarios, two integer mathematical programming models were formulated and implemented with the case study. Thereafter, the results of the two scenarios were assessed with relevant indicators that were extracted from the literature. The results showed that the use of drones for urban distribution reduced the carbon dioxide emissions, the average delivery time per package and the distribution costs. The results of the literature review and the stakeholder analysis indicate that the lack of a legal framework is the most important obstacle towards the use of drones for parcels’ distribution in urban environments.