About Us

At the Megacity Logistics Lab, we address these challenges by bringing together business, logistics, and urban planning perspectives to develop appropriate technologies, infrastructures, and policies for sustainable urban logistics operations.

Our work aims to promote new urban delivery models, from unattended home delivery solutions to smart locker systems, to click & collect services, to drone delivery. We are pushing the limits of existing logistics network designs as future city logistics networks need to support omni-channel retail models, smaller store formats, increased intensity of deliveries, coordinate multiple transshipment points, engage a wider range of vehicle technologies – including electric and autonomous vehicles – and support complex inventory balancing and deployment strategies.

Logistics is a quality of life enabler. It provides for the delivery of goods and services to city dwellers and allows them to enjoy and benefit from the urban environment. Yet, urban logistics comes with its fair share of challenges and the emerging urban context has increased network complexity in three main ways.

Urban growth
occuring in Asia
and Africa by
2050

Challenge 1: Demand Growth

Humanity is in the midst of the greatest migration of all times, that from rural to urban. The UN expects 70% of world population to live in cities by 2050 and most of the growth is to come from emerging markets and new global economic hot stops. This growth is to lead to business opportunities and potential market openings, but demand growth will put additional stress on current and future transportation networks.

Challenge 2: Evolving Consumer Expectations

The increased penetration of electronics has triggered a boom in the amount of direct shipments from manufacturers and retailers to individual consumers and is leading to the I-want-it-now economy. These direct deliveries exert increased pressure on existing last-mile transportation networks, leading to fragmentation and increased complexity of operations and requiring greater coordination between stakeholders to reach desired service levels (such as 60-minute delivery). 

e-Commerce
growth in
2017

Supply Chain
cost associate
with last-mile

Challenge 3: Policy Strictness

Increasingly stringent regulations to curb air and noise pollution are leading cities to reduce road access and parking spaces in favor of active and public transportation infrastructure. These policies disproportionally impact logistics operations that need to balance compliance while providing for their expected growth and increasingly rigorous customer expectations.