Robust logistics network design for perishable products under river transport uncertainty: An integrative review and conceptual requirements for the Amazonian bioeconomy

Abstract This article reports an integrative literature review, with a systematic search, on the design of logistics networks for perishable products in inland waterway transport, focusing on the Amazonian bioeconomy. The aim is to identify conceptual requirements for the location and sizing of Primary Processing Centers (PPCs), considering perishability, time-dependent quality (TDQ), transport time variability, and long-term strategic decisions. The search followed PRISMA 2020 in Scopus and SciELO (2006–2026). Of the 20,389 records identified, 2,346 made up, after screening, a mapping corpus, from which a core set of 25 studies read in full was drawn by purposive selection with explicit criteria. The central gap was confirmed, using a reproducible rule, in the 799 records on perishable network modeling. Of the eight modeling studies, only one addresses river transport, without deciding location or considering perishability; the five that model perishability do not treat uncertainty at a formal level and are restricted to land-based or temperature-controlled networks; and no model with perishability applies formal robustness metrics. The seven studies on Amazonian navigation describe or quantify waterway constraints, but none decides location or sizing. Based on these gaps, the article formalizes three verifiable requirements: transit time and capacity dependent on river stage; minimum quality on arrival, which defines the catchment radius of each PPC; and network evaluation using an explicit risk metric across hydrological scenarios.