Principal Investigator Matthias Winkenbach
Co-investigators Christopher Caplice , Daniel Merchan
Project Website http://megacitylab.mit.edu/
The Megacity Logistics Lab is a research initiative of the MIT Center for Transportation Studies.
Megacities -- cities with a population of at least 10 million people – are increasing in both number and size, and their share of world GDP is expected to grow from about 14% to over 20% in a decade. Most of the 23 megacities that currently exist are located in emerging markets.
Up until now research on the megacity phenomenon has centered on the urban landscape, people mobility and managing traffic congestion. Based within the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, the Megacity Logistics Lab focuses on understanding and transforming the supply chains that interface with these sprawling urban centers.a
At the Megacity Logistics Lab, we address these challenges by bringing together business, logistics, and urban planning perspectives to develop appropriate technologies, infrastructures, and policies for sustainable urban logistics operations.
Work aims to promote new urban delivery models, from unattended home delivery solutions to smart locker systems, to click & collect services, to drone delivery. We are pushing the limits of existing logistics network designs as future city logistics networks need to support omni-channel retail models, smaller store formats, increased intensity of deliveries, coordinate multiple transshipment points, engage a wider range of vehicle technologies – including electric and autonomous vehicles – and support complex inventory balancing and deployment strategies.