The logistical deployment of resources to provide relief to disaster victims and the appropriate planning of these activities are critical to reduce the suffering caused. Disaster management attracts many organisations working alongside each other and sharing resources to cope with an emergency.Consequently, successful operations rely heavily on the collaboration of different organisations.Despite this, there is little research considering the appropriate management of resources from multiple organisations, and none optimising the number of actors required to avoid shortages or convergence.This research introduces a disaster preparedness system based on a combination of multi-objective optimisation and geographical information systems to aid multi-organisational decision-making. A cartographic model is used to avoid the selection of floodable facilities, informing a bi-objective optimisation model used to determine the location of emergency facilities, stock prepositioning, resource allocation and relief distribution, along with the number of actors required to perform these activities.The real conditions of the flood of 2013 in Acapulco, Mexico, provided evidence of the inability of any single organisation to cope with the situation independently. Moreover, data collected showed the unavailability of enough resources to manage a disaster of that magnitude at the time. The results highlighted that the number of government organisations deployed to handle the situation was excessive, leading to high cost without achieving the best possible level of satisfaction. The system proposed showed the potential to achieve better performance in terms of cost and level of service than the approach currently employed by the authorities.Keywords: Humanitarian logistics, multiple objective programming, OR in disaster relief, disaster preparedness. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK2.

The growing importance of humanitarian operations has created an imperative to overcome the complications currently recorded in the field. Challenges such as delays, congestion, poor communication and lack of accountability may represent opportunities to test the reported advantages of emergent disruptive technologies. Meanwhile, the literature on humanitarian supply chains looks at isolated applications of technology and lacks a framework for understanding challenges and solutions, a gap that this article aims to fill. Using a case study based on the flood of Tabasco of 2007 in Mexico, this research identifies solutions based on the use of emergent disruptive technologies. Furthermore, this article argues that the integration of different technologies is essential to deliver real benefits to the humanitarian supply chain. As a result, it proposes a framework to improve the flow of information, products and financial resources in humanitarian supply chains integrating three emergent disruptive technologies; Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and 3D Printing. The analysis presented shows the potential of the framework to reduce congestion in the supply chain, enhance simultaneous collaboration of different stakeholders, decrease lead times, increase transparency, traceability and accountability of material and financial resources, and allow victims to get involved in the fulfilment of their own needs.

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The impact of blockchain technology (BCT) implementation on the accuracy, reliability, visibility, incorruptibility, and timeliness of supply-chain processes and transactions, makes it attractive to improve the robustness, transparency, accountability and decision-making in risk management. Therefore, the emerging BCT can present an invaluable opportunity for the organisations in need of preparing for and responding to uncertain and complex instances. The adoption of BCT in the operations and supply chain management (OSCM) literature remains scarcely investigated, especially in the context of managing risks in emergency situations such as crises, disasters, and pandemics, which are characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) in the business environment. This article will contribute to the OSCM literature by developing a conceptual model that will examine the causal relationships between VUCA business environment, constructs derived from technology acceptance model (TAM), resilience and behavioural intention of the operations managers to adopt BCT for risk management. The model was tested by gathering responses from 116 operations managers in the UK (during COVID-19 pandemic) through structural equation modelling. Findings from the analysis suggest that understanding the benefits of BCT, involvement in resilient organisational practices and user-friendly implementation of the technology will have a significant and positive influence on the intention to adopt BCT for risk management in the OSCM context. Building upon these findings, we have proposed a BCT decision framework to assess the feasibility and suitability of adopting BCT in each context (such as risk management), which will have strategic implications for operations managers and the OSCM community.

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