Under the title "Resilience Strategies for City Logistics under Disruptions", or ReSCueD for short, Prof. Dr. Pirmin Fontaine, Professor of Logistics and Operations Analytics, and his team want to develop mathematical models and decision support methods that make urban supply chains more resilient to disruptions. "We are concerned with the so-called last mile, i.e. the part of the supply chain within the city”, says Fontaine. The demand for urban logistics has been rising continuously for years, while traffic and environmental problems in cities are increasing. "If you look at the statistics, a household in Germany now receives an average of more than 100 parcels per year", explains Fontaine. "We are also not just interested in the growing e-commerce sector. When we talk about urban logistics, we mean all flows of goods in urban areas – including those from industry and retail, for example."
Beating traffic jams: DFG project aims to optimize urban supply chains
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Multimodal systems and their weak points
More coordinated, two-stage delivery concepts are currently being tested in several major European cities: Goods are bundled on the outskirts of the city, taken by streetcar or larger vans to so-called satellite points in the city center, where they are distributed to smaller, low-emission vehicles or cargo bikes. However, such systems are susceptible to disruptions, as different modes of transport have to be closely coordinated. "ReSCueD is specifically about the fact that these systems need to be synchronized", emphasizes Fontaine. Unexpected disruptions in the first step could bring the entire system to a standstill. "If the cargo bike rider has to wait an hour because the streetcar hasn't arrived yet, it's extremely ineffective and costs a lot of money." A realistic example; after all, only 70 percent of streetcars in Munich are on time. The central research question of Fontaine and his team colleagues is therefore: "How do I plan urban logistics systems taking uncertainties into account?" The aim is to make supply chains in cities more robust and resilient – in other words, to ensure that they continue to function as efficiently as possible even in the event of disruptions.
Mathematical models for uncertain systems
As a DFG-funded project, ReSCueD has a fundamental research orientation. Fontaine wants to determine models and algorithms that are as universally valid as possible, not a specific plan for an individual city. The focus is on a complex stochastic optimization model. "The biggest challenge for us is that we have to work with fragmentary information and uncertainties", explains the KU professor. It is about strategic resource decisions: "How many streetcars should run and when, how many couriers, how many e-vehicles – and how many transfer points make sense? This is all taking into account that there may be three disruptions on one day, none on another and 17 on yet another."
As a first step, the research team wants to understand where disruptions can occur in an urban supply chain and what they cause. Classic traffic jams for cars and trucks have to be taken into account, but the streetcar is also susceptible to disruption if, for example, an emergency ambulance or simply a parked car blocks the tracks. The second step is to develop and test recovery strategies, i.e. concepts for restoring the entire system despite a malfunction. "If it is reported that a longer emergency operation is taking place further along the streetcar route, it must be clear what needs to be done: Should a van be sent quickly to unload the parcels before the actual transshipment point and drive on to the customer? Or is it not worth it, perhaps because delays are also to be expected on the road?"
Research at the intersection of mathematics, economics and data science
Pirmin Fontaine's Department of Logistics and Operations Analytics is based at the KU's Ingolstadt School of Management and is also a member of MIDS, the Mathematical Institute for Machine Learning and Data Science at the KU. This corresponds to the international positioning of his field of research at the interface of economics, operations research and data science. For Fontaine, ReSCueD is a good example of the productive combination of mathematical modelling, optimization methods and data-driven approaches: "In the final part of the project, we will use machine learning methods to gain additional insights and knowledge."
ReSCueD is being funded by the German Research Foundation for three years, with the project’s official start in July 2025. KU Professor Fontaine has brought Canadian Professor Teodor Gabriel Crainic on board as an international collaboration partner. Both also work together with Walter Rei (Canada) and Ola Jabali (Italy). By summer 2028, the team wants to make a joint contribution to organizing logistics in large cities in a more crisis-proof, efficient and therefore more sustainable way – a challenge that is likely to become even more important in view of increasing delivery volumes.
