Spatial Changes in Food-Delivery Supply Under Low-Altitude Delivery Networks: Agent-Based Scenarios in Nanjing

Urban drone delivery operates as a city-scale service network jointly structured by launch nodes, flight links, pickup lockers, pedestrian access, and outlet locations. Using 3569 street blocks and 21,366 food-delivery outlets in central Nanjing, this study develops an agent-based scenario model for pre-implementation assessment that links effective consumer access, node-level demand allocation, and outlet relocation and examines outlet-side access impedance together with 81 infrastructure configurations. Under the baseline configuration, flight links potentially cover all blocks, while only 22.6% satisfy the last-mile locker-access condition. Relative to the common road-delivery baseline, the standard deviational ellipse (SDE) area of the simulated outlet distribution contracts by a mean of 25.03% across ten runs, and the mean number of blocks with outlets decreases from 3460 to 3122.8. As outlet-to-node access impedance increases, the mean share of outlets within 1 km of launch nodes rises from 31.68% to 65.07%. Across the 81 configurations, mean SDE-area changes range from −46.69% to +21.62%. Within the tested levels, the pickup-locker configuration and flight-link distance are associated with larger differences in SDE response; walking radius mainly affects effective consumer access, whereas launch-node configuration mainly alters outlet–node proximity. The study provides a spatial screening framework for comparing urban drone-delivery networks along the complete delivery chain before detailed fleet, routing, and operational design.