Resilience Strategies for City Logistics under Disruptions (ReSCueD)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Pirmin Fontaine
• Subject Area: Operations Management and Computer Science for Business Administration
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 494820262

This research project investigates the impact of sudden disruptions in city logistics systems with several cooperating logistics service providers. To overcome from these disruptions, we develop and evaluate several recovery strategies and integrate them into a resilience strategy. For doing so, we consider a two-tier city logistics system where multiple logistics service providers are cooperating on the multi-modal first tier. On the first tier, the goods are transported to so-called satellites from where each logistics service provider transports its demand to its own customers using small environmental-friendly vehicles. On the first tierwhich uses, for example, cargo trams or larger transporter, disruption can occur. These disruptions interfere the further transportation and can therefore effect multiple logistics service providers. In a first step, we develop different recovery strategies and formulate them mathematically as mixed-integer linear programs. Then, we integrate those into a tactical planning problem. This decision support model aims to allocate resources and select first-tier services in the mid-term planning (e.g., a season). It is formulated as a two-stage stochastic program and solved using an exact decomposition technique (branch-and-repair), to generate the resilient tactical plan. The goal of branch-and-repair is to efficiently find feasible solutions such that the focus in this project lies on the development of the repair mechanism. Finally, we use machine learning (decision trees) to derive simple rules that allow immediate operative decisions in case of a disruption. To test the methods and resilience strategies, we will extend existing data sets and already developed an instance generator with disruption data. Within several case study, we will analyze the effects of the selection of services and modes, the composition of logistics service providers, and the vulnerability to disruptions on the resilience strategies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Canada
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Teodor Gabriel Crainic, Ph.D.