Designing Drone Delivery Networks for Vaccine Supply Chain: A Case Study of Niger

AbstractThis research aims to evaluate the use of drones to deliver pediatric vaccines in remote areas of low-income and low-middle-income countries. Delivering vaccines in these regions is challenging because of the inadequate road networks and long transportation distances that make it difficult to maintain the cold chain’s integrity during delivery. We propose a mixed-integer linear program to determine the location of drone hubs to facilitate vaccine delivery. The model considers the operational attributes of drones, vaccine wastage in the supply chain, cold storage, and transportation capacities. We develop a case study using data from Niger to determine the impact of drone deliveries in improving vaccine availability. Based on our numerical analysis, regional centers should be considered potential locations for drone hubs. We demonstrate that outreach sessions supported by drone deliveries of vaccines can improve vaccine availability. These improvements depend on the available budget to build drone hubs and purchase drones, available cold storage capacity, and the population density in the study region.Keywords: Drone delivery networkVaccine supply chain in low-income and low-middle-income countriesMixed-integer linear programNiger’s vaccine supply chainDisclaimerAs a service to authors and researchers we are providing this version of an accepted manuscript (AM). Copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proofs will be undertaken on this manuscript before final publication of the Version of Record (VoR). During production and pre-press, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal relate to these versions also. FundingThe author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.