Logistic activity can be thought of as a socio‐technical process whereby a social network of individuals orchestrates a series of technical activities using supporting systems such as transportation and communications. To understand the functioning of the entire system requires proper consideration of all its components. We identify seven key components: the objectives being pursued, the origin of the commodity flows to be transported, knowledge of demand, the decision‐making structure, periodicity and volume of logistic activities, and the state of the social networks and supporting systems. Based on our analysis of the differences between commercial and humanitarian logistics, we pinpoint research gaps that need to be filled to enhance both the efficiency of humanitarian logistics and the realism of the mathematical models designed to support it. We argue that humanitarian logistics is too broad a field to fit neatly into a single definition of operational conditions. At one end of the spectrum we find humanitarian logistic efforts of the kind conducted in long‐term disaster recovery and humanitarian assistance, where operational efficiency – akin to commercial logistics – is a prime consideration. At the other, post‐disaster humanitarian logistic operations involved in disaster response and short‐term recovery activities represent a vastly different operational environment, often in chaotic settings where urgent needs, life‐or‐death decisions and scarce resources are the norm. The huge contrast between these operational environments requires that they be treated separately.

The paper argues that welfare economic principles must be incorporated in post‐disaster humanitarian logistic models to ensure delivery strategies that lead to the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The paper's analyses suggest the use of social costs—the summation of logistic and deprivation costs—as the preferred objective function for post‐disaster humanitarian logistic models. The paper defines deprivation cost as the economic valuation of the human suffering associated with a lack of access to a good or service. The use of deprivation costs is evaluated with a review of the philosophy and the economic literature to identify proper foundations for their estimation; a comparison of different proxy approaches to consider human suffering (e.g., minimization of penalties or weight factors, penalties for late deliveries, equity constraints, unmet demands) and their implications; and an analysis of the impacts of errors in estimation. In its final sections, the paper conducts numerical experiments to illustrate the comparative impacts of using the proxy approaches suggested in the literature, and concludes with a discussion of key findings.

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Extreme events pose serious logistical challenges to emergency and aid organizations active in preparation, response, and recovery operations, because the disturbances they produce have the potential to turn normal conditions suddenly into chaos. Under these conditions, delivering critical supplies (e.g., food, water, medical supplies) becomes an extremely difficult task because of the severe damage to the physical and virtual infrastructure and the limited or nonexistent transportation capacity. In this context, the recovery process is made more difficult by the prevailing lack of knowledge about the nature and challenges of emergency supply chains. As a result, the design of reliable emergency logistics systems is hampered by lack of knowledge about how formal and informal (emergent) supply chains operate and interact; methods to analyze and coordinate the flows of priority and nonpriority goods; and, in general, scientific methods to analyze logistics systems under extreme conditions. This paper describes the key logistical issues that plagued the response to Hurricane Katrina. The logistical failures following Katrina, which in August 2005 devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast, provide an example of the need to improve the efficiency of supply chains to the site of an extreme event. The paper is based on public accounts of the event and interviews conducted during a number of field visits to the Katrina-affected area in the aftermath of the event, as part of a research project funded by the National Science Foundation.

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