Potential applications of unmanned ground and aerial vehicles to mitigate challenges of transport and logistics-related critical success factors in the humanitarian supply chain

The present decade has seen an upsurge in the research on the applications ofautonomous vehicles and drones to present innovative and sustainable solutions fortraditional transportation and logistical challenges. Similarly, in this study, we proposeusing autonomous cars and drones to resolve conventional logistics and transportchallenges faced by international humanitarian organizations (IHOs) during a reliefoperation. We do so by identifying, shortlisting, and elaborating critical successfactors or key transport and logistics challenges from the existing humanitarianliterature and present a conceptual model to mitigate these challenges byintegrating unmanned ground (UGVs) and aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the humanitariansupply chain. To understand how this novel idea of using UGVs and UAVs could helpIHOs, we drafted three research questions, first focusing on the identification ofexisting challenges, second concentrating on remediation of these challenges, andthe third to understand realization timeline for UGVs and UAVs. This lead to thedevelopment of a semi-structured, open-ended questionnaire to record therespondents’perspectives on the existing challenges and their potential solutions.We gathered data form, ten interviewees, with substantial experience in thehumanitarian sector from six IHOs stationed in Pakistan and Austria. In light of thefeedback for the second research question, we present a conceptual model ofintegrating UAVs and UGVs in the relief chain. The results of the study indicate thattechnological advancement in mobility withholds the potential to mitigate theexisting challenges faced by IHOs. However, IHOs tend to be reluctant in adaptingUGVs compared to UAVs. The results also indicate that the adaptation of thesetechnologies is subject to their technical maturity, and there are no significantdifferences in opinions found between the IHOs from Pakistan and Austria.