The global economy is becoming metropolitan. A metropolitan area is a large residential, institutional, and communication complex, significant in the economy and politics. The main criterion for the delimitation of metropolitan areas is the content and density of the settlement network and the concentration of institutions providing services on a supranational scale.
Metropolization makes the division between rural and urban areas less useful. Formal villages in a metropolitan area are, in essence, more “urban” than towns in the distant provinces.
In this context, the definition of City Logistics (citylogistics) can be formulated as follows: CL is a tool for solving problems of the functioning of highly urbanized areas – microregions (metropolises), which are urban agglomerations. CL takes into account such factors as: transport, warehousing, road network configuration, telecommunications network, municipal services, energy supply, water supply, and waste disposal – along with the accompanying economic relations. In other words, all those activities that make up the day and night mode of life of a city as an economic, social, and cultural space.
Furthermore, city logistics includes the scope of extraordinary activities within the metropolis – in crisis situations (e.g., failures, accidents) restoring the aforementioned order. Human life, especially in metropolitan areas, is exposed to accidents, failures, and disasters because it increasingly depends on: technique and technology, cooperation and collaboration, and the movement of goods and resources. The synergy of these factors changes situations perceived as ordinary disturbances into crisis situations.
Logistics issues in crisis operations
In crisis situations, the demand for logistical support increases radically. A fundamental feature of a crisis is the interruption of functioning systemic and functional connections in the metropolitan (city) area. The logistics of crisis operations identifies and mobilizes resources, activates reserves, restores connections (of various types), or creates substitute connections to ensure the effectiveness of the forces eliminating the sources and consequences of the failure. This aspect, especially in city logistics, has not been noticed until now.
The term “crisis” for the purposes of this article is defined as: a period of breakthrough, a turning point, a moment in which the further state of affairs is decided: the continuation or not of a given entity – characterized by three elements: time pressure, the possibility of a fundamental threat, and surprise. The interaction of these three elements creates an unambiguous definition of the logistics of crisis operations.
Crisis situations are usually caused by damage to CL subsystems. Damage is an event that forms the basis for the technical assessment of a logistics system. Damage is defined differently, and depending on the adopted definition of assessment, it can be incomparable and varied. In national standards, damage is defined as: “an event causing a transition from a state of fitness to a state of unfitness” (PN-80/N-04000). The most significant problem in developing a damage model is its recognition. It determines the scope of information for describing and assessing an individual event or recurring sequences of events. An exemplary characterization of damage to logistics systems is presented in Fig. 1. For the inhabitants of a metropolis, it is important to have knowledge about damage causing a specific unfitness of the system, e.g., a failure, disaster, etc., and consequently destruction, loss of durability, threat to the safety of life and the environment, profitable or unprofitable costs of renewal, etc.
The article comes from the journal “Logistyka” 2002/6.