Humanitarian Logistics

Abstract

Please scroll down for article-it is on subsequent pagesINFORMS is the largest professional society in the world for professionals in the fields of operations research, management science, and analytics. For more information on INFORMS, its publications, membership, or meetings visit http://www.informs.org INFORMS 2012 c 2012 INFORMS | isbn 978-0-9843378-3-5 http://dx.Abstract The increase in natural and man-made disasters in the recent years has highlighted challenging problems in humanitarian operations, in addition to major long-term humanitarian development challenges. Humanitarian logistics plays an important role in preparing for, responding to, and recovering from sudden-onset disasters and addressing long-term development issues. The management of humanitarian logistics operations involves many challenges such as conflicting objectives from multiple stakeholders, coordination and collaboration, high uncertainty, and scarcity of resources. In this tutorial, we provide an introduction to humanitarian logistics and its main application areas while outlining current research trends and the major challenges faced in the area today. We also present four decision aid tools addressing typical applications of humanitarian logistics: network design for donated human breast milk delivery in South Africa, port simulation and shipment scheduling for a large international agency, demand estimation and emergency procurement for CARE, and postdisaster medical response under accessibility issues. In presenting these decision aid tools, we aim to underline the differences in issues arising from sudden-onset disasters and long-term development problems, various stages of the life cycle of disasters, and different decision levels, while also pointing to general aspects in modeling humanitarian logistics problems.

Modeling for the equitable and effective distribution of donated food under capacity constraints

“…Adivar et al (2010) point out that operations research has been widely used for sudden-onset disaster relief operations but -very little, if any, research focuses on optimizing relief efforts for slow-onset disasters or social welfare operations.‖ These authors work with an NGO in Turkey to optimize coal distribution by choosing optimal transfer sites and the corresponding shipment amounts using a mixed integer linear program to minimize total cost under various constraints. Celik et al (2012) study a strategic decision problem based on planning the expansion of a supply chain for banking donated human breast milk in South Africa in order to ensure that every needy infant has equal probability of access to donated breast milk. Their equity objective is similar to ours, but they focus on a strategic problem (network design) rather than a tactical one (distribution).…”

“…In Section 6, we discuss the conclusions and limitations of our study and we suggest some directions for future research. Celik et al (2012) divide humanitarian issues into two general categories: disasters and long-term humanitarian development issues. Studies in humanitarian logistics can be classified by the types of decisions (strategic, tactical, and/or operational); objectives and performance measures (cost, equity, sustainability, lead times, effectiveness, etc.…”

Modeling disruption in a fresh produce supply chain

“…Understanding SCs' contributions to disaster relief and response is also increasingly important. Practitioners (Eisner, 2007, Fenton, 2008, Nelan, 2008, media, organizational reports, and scholars (Van Wassenhove, 2006, Holguín-Veras et al, 2007, Kovács and Spens, 2007, Apte, 2010a, Çelik et al, 2012 agree that preparation and planning is a significant part of any relief effort. Disasters can be large-scale natural disasters (Trunick, 2005, Apte, 2010a, Kovacs and Spens, 2012 or manmade disasters that occur locally (see, e.g., Van Wassenhove, 2006, Ergun et al, 2008, Apte, 2010a, Eßig and Tandler, 2010, Tatham et al, 2013.…”

A metaheuristic approach to the reliable location routing problem under disruptions

“…These studies focused on the stocking and distribution of relief supplies considering road destruction; however, they assumed that facilities are always reliable. The objective in humanitarian logistics is often fairness in distribution, demand coverage, risk reduction, timely response, quick recovery, and minimizing loss of life, etc., whereas commercial logistics are focused on cost, revenue or profit (Holguín-Veras et al, 2012;Çelik et al, 2012). Our study is within the scope of commercial logistics.…”