What's the Buzz? The City-Scale Impacts of Drone Delivery

As more companies experiment with drone delivery, there is a need to explore the impact that increasing numbers of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could have on towns and cities. This report focuses on possible impacts to cities including: aerial congestion, energy consumption of drone delivery versus truck delivery, infrastructure requirements, privacy issues, and drone noise. Models are developed based on hypothetical cities roughly modeled after Los Angeles, California; Kigali, Rwanda; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Tokyo, Japan. It is concluded that drone delivery systems should be encouraged in cities where an analysis of conditions shows them to be beneficial. In addition, having many drone centers rather than one centralized center may reduce aerial congestion, noise, size of fleet, and energy consumption.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.7249/RR1718
• Record URL:
  https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1718.html
• Corporate Authors:

  RAND Corporation

  Santa Monica, CA  United States 
• Authors:
  • Lohn, Andrew J
• Publication Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Appendices; Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 46p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Cities; Delivery service; Drones; Energy consumption; Forecasting; Impacts; Infrastructure; Mathematical models; Noise; Privacy; Traffic congestion; Transportation planning; Trucks
• Subject Areas: Aviation; Freight Transportation; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01644124
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: RR-1718-RC
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Aug 28 2017 9:09AM