Do Drones dream of a Resilient and Sustainable Urban Distribution? A Literature Review

Over the last 20 years, the demand for transport services has grown thanks to increasing globalization and e-commerce exponentially. This led to the rise in externalities (e.g., air pollution, climate change, noise pollution, traffic congestion), an issue that is particularly relevant in urban contexts. The improvement of last-mile delivery processes comes as a natural necessity. The considerable pressure on urban systems was further pushed by the outbreak of COVID-19, which highlighted the need for a delivery system able to provide a fast, resilient and safe contactless solution to reach isolated or quarantined areas with ease. To cope with the abovementioned issues, many authors have been looking toward adopting unmanned aerial vehicles (a.k.a. drones) in logistics. Therefore, this work aims to identify how drones can improve last-mile logistics resilience and sustainability and understand the impact of drones on urban distribution. The following research questions will be answered to achieve these objectives: Which applications of drones to urban distribution have been researched? What is the impact of drones on urban distribution in terms of resilience and sustainability? This paper follows a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach. The SLR was conducted on the Scopus database and is based on 159 articles. This literature review provides insights into the current state of drone-enhanced urban distribution scientific literature, finds existing gaps and suggests future research opportunities to develop a resilient and sustainable urban distribution system.