Protecting vulnerable people during pandemics through home delivery of essential supplies: a distribution logistics model

Abstract

PurposeThis paper studies a concept for protecting vulnerable population groups during pandemics using direct home deliveries of essential supplies, from a distribution logistics perspective. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate feasible and resource-efficient home delivery strategies, including collaboration between retailers and logistics service providers based on a practical application.Design/methodology/approachA food home delivery concept in urban areas during pandemics is mathematically modeled. All seniors living in a district of Berlin, Germany, represent the vulnerable population supplied by a grocery distribution center. A capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) is developed in combination with a k-means clustering algorithm. To manage this large-scale problem efficiently, mixed-integer programming (MIP) is used. The impact of collaboration and additional delivery scenarios is examined with a sensitivity analysis.FindingsRoughly 45 medically vulnerable persons can be served by one delivery vehicle in the baseline scenario. Operational measures allow a drastic decrease in required resources by reducing service quality. In this way, home delivery for the vulnerable population of Berlin can be achieved. This requires collaboration between grocery and parcel services and public authorities as well as overcoming accompanying challenges.Originality/valueDeveloping a home delivery concept for providing essential goods to urban vulnerable groups during pandemics creates a special value. Setting a large-scale CVRP with variable fleet size in combination with a clustering algorithm contributes to the originality.

Emergency supplies purchase patterns during COVID-19 outbreak in the developing economy: frequency and stockpiling drivers’ assessment

“…Thus, the statistical significance of an attribute "number of adults with age 65 years old and older in a household" denotes that households with senior people reduced their shopping frequency to minimize the risk of senior household members being infected through visits to shops during the outbreak. This finding confirms results seen in studies by Babatunde et al (2020), Breitbarth et al (2021), Sokat and Altay (2021), where humanitarian issues during the pandemic crisis suggested that the needs of vulnerable populations should be considered first.…”

“…We paid special attention to age and employment status as the COVID-19 pandemic influenced differently people from different age groups and working activities. Also, we emphasized senior people availability in households as this age group was most vulnerable to the COVID-19 virus (Breitbarth et al, 2021;Sokat and Altay, 2021).…”

“…Because of the difficulties associated with urban logistics, urban areas are highly vulnerable to people's shopping behavior changes, which cause changes in the supply chains and require new strategies to be developed (Wu and Chaipiyaphan, 2019;Chaudhuri et al, 2020;Altay and Narayanan, 2021;Thompson and Anderson, 2021). The pandemic, as is common among all crisis and disasters, affected vulnerable population groups first (Allahi et al, 2021;Babatunde et al, 2020;Breitbarth et al, 2021;Blank, 2021;Sokat and Altay, 2021). Older people, for example, had difficulty accessing their usual food supplies due to a risk of being infected during physical store visits.…”

“…Given the possible severe consequences of infection for seniors (Jordan et al, 2020) the ability to safely access food supplies became crucial. As shopping activities during COVID-19 had substantial modifications, and became more online oriented, even for food items (Grashuis et al, 2020), home delivery-based supplies were considered the key option to provide older people with the food they needed (Breitbarth et al, 2021).…”

How Retailers Support Consumers during the Pandemic: Kaufland Case Study

“…In the future, other pandemics or epidemics may reveal different vulnerable population groups." (Breitbarth et al, 2021). The brands whose role was crucial during the lockdown and relaxation measures belong to such categories of products and services: supermarkets, banks, delivery food, communication, Internet providers, media, online platforms.…”