USING UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS TO ENSURE ECONOMIC RESILIENCE OF HUMANITARIAN SUPPLY CHAINS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION'S MILITARY AGGRESSION AGAINST UKRAINE

Abstract

Background. The relevance of the study lies in the need to analyze the use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in the organization of the humanitarian supply chain to save lives and provide assistance to the affected population in conditions of a humanitarian crisis. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the theoretical foundations of the economic resilience of the humanitarian supply chain as a tool for responding to a humanitarian crisis, as well as to develop conceptual and process models for organizing the delivery of humanitarian cargo using UAS at the "last mile" stage, which is the most costly due to high security risks in combat zones and frontline areas. The paper is devoted to solving the following tasks: to investigate the essence and main characteristics of the economic resilience of the humanitarian supply chain; to identify the possibilities of integrating UAVs into humanitarian supply chains; to substantiate the procedure for making a decision on the choice of UAVs; to detail the technological process of delivering cargo by drones. The authors put forward the following hypothesis: the economic resilience of humanitarian supply chains under martial law in Ukraine can be significantly enhanced by integrating unmanned aerial systems at the "last mile" stage due to development of: a conceptual model of organizing the delivery of humanitarian cargo, which systematizes the parameters of the components of the transport system and reflects their relationships with the decision-making process regarding the organization of the transportation process, which in turn determines the parameters of the logistics chain assessment; an adaptive process model that takes into account specific technological operations for transporting UAV cargo, operational flexibility, and speed of response to critical changes in the conflict zone.
Methods. The following methods were used in the study: comparison (to identify differences between humanitarian and commercial supply chains), analysis and synthesis (to reveal the nature and study the components of the humanitarian supply chain), content analysis and bibliometric analysis (when processing scientific literature on the organization of the humanitarian cargo supply), abstract-logical method (to identify key characteristics of the resilience of the supply chain), systems approach (when considering the humanitarian supply chain as a complex system that interacts with the external environment (crisis conditions) and identifying factors that ensure its resilience), generalization (to group factors that influence the integration of UAVs into humanitarian supply chains), morphological analysis (to justify the choice of UAVs). To confirm the hypothesis, a process approach was used, which allowed formalizing the process of delivering humanitarian cargo by UAVs at the "last mile" stage in order to quickly respond to changes and ensure the economic resilience of the supply chain.
Results. The study showed the feasibility of integrating UAS into humanitarian supply chains at the "last mile" delivery stage. The humanitarian supply chain is a component of the humanitarian crisis management mechanism and is an integrated system for planning, purchasing, transporting and distributing humanitarian goods for the population affected by military conflicts or disasters. The paper reveals the main characteristics of the humanitarian supply chain as a complex and dynamic system. For the resilience of humanitarian supply chains in conditions of uncertainty, the following three components are important: strategic redundancy, radical flexibility and cluster culture of response. The economic component of the resilience of humanitarian supply chains includes: compliance with the principle of cost-efficiency and ensuring resilience through cost minimization; financial flexibility and the ability to redirect funds from one type of aid to another in the face of changing situations. In the process of assessing economic resilience, the following parameters are assessed: the degree of fulfillment of the request; safety and accuracy of cargo delivery, and delivery speed. The developed models take into account such indicators of economic resilience as: mission success rate, service recovery time, route availability coefficient. From the point of view of socio-economic parameters, it is important to take into account the aid availability index and the cost of a saved life.
Criteria for evaluating the performance of the mission have been identified, in particular: socio-humanitarian criterion, time minimization criterion, economic cost criterion for performing the delivery task, efficiency and safety of transportation, taking into account the parameters of the control system and the parameters of the external environment. A conceptual model of the organization of humanitarian cargo delivery has been proposed, which systematizes the parameters of the transport system components, and determines the parameters for evaluating the logistics chain.
Сonclusions. The developed adaptive process model for the delivery of humanitarian aid by UAS under martial law, which is based on the delivery organization parameters and technological operations described in the paper, allows for the formalization of the delivery process and its reproducibility, as well as effective risk management. In practice, the use of the proposed model can become an effective tool for designing a safe and economically viable logistics supply chain for humanitarian cargo for the affected population in areas of critical security risk. This experience can be scaled up by other countries.