a b s t r a c tEconomic systems are increasingly prone to complexity and uncertainty. Therefore, making wellinformed decisions requires risk analysis, control and mitigation. In some areas such as finance, insurance, crisis management and health care, the importance of considering risk is largely acknowledged and well-elaborated, yet rather heterogeneous concepts and approaches for risk management have been developed. The increased frequency and the severe consequences of past supply chain disruptions have resulted in an increasing interest in risk. This development has led to the adoption of the risk concepts, terminologies and methods from related fields. In this paper, existing approaches for quantitative supply chain risk management are reviewed by setting the focus on the definition of supply chain risk and related concepts.

This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting galley proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. AbstractHumanitarian supply chains (HSCs) play a central role in effective and efficient disaster relief operations. Transportation has a critical share in HSCs and managing its risks helps to avoid further disruptions in relief operations. However, there is no common approach to or culture of risk management that its applicability has been studied through recent cases. This paper incorporates an empirical research design and makes a threefold contribution: first it identifies in-country transportation risks during Nepal response. Second, we evaluate afore identified risks through an expert driven risk assessment grid. Third, we use our field data to study how some humanitarian organizations in Nepal response used logistics service providers for managing those moderate-and high-level risks.In this paper, we use both qualitative and quantitative methods. Our qualitative analysis reveals that some of the most important in-country transportation risks were delivery delays; market fluctuations; insufficient capacity; loss of cargo; cargo decay; unreliable information; and ethical concerns. Our quantitative work shows that while participants categorized the first three risks as high-level risks, the rest were ranked as moderate-level. More investigation in our field data indicates that using logistics service providers (LSPs) helped humanitarians significantly to manage afore in-country transportation risks during Nepal response. It also improved overall HSC performance with respect to flexibility, effectiveness, efficiency, and responsiveness. While this finding empirically confirms the "tools" role of LSPs for managing in-country transportation risks in response, it implies another role for LSPs; "contributors" to performance improvements.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze how far technology and information enable, facilitate or support the planning and implementation decisions in humanitarian vaccine cold chains for vaccination campaigns. The authors specifically focus on three emerging technologies that have the potential to create more flexible conditions in the field, and identify the need to further explore the link between uncertainty, information and irreversibility. Design/methodology/approach The authors present a basic structure for the analysis of cold chain disruptions in terms of three distinct yet connected layers of deficient infrastructure and capacity, information gaps and failures in decision making. The authors then review three humanitarian technologies and their impact on vaccine campaigns along these layers. From there, a research agenda is developed to address research gaps this review brought forward. Findings Three critical research gaps in the areas of technology innovation for humanitarian vaccine cold chain management are presented. The authors argue that technology to improve capacity, information and decisions need to be aligned, and that the areas of uncertainty, information and irreversibility require further investigation to achieve this alignment. In this way, the paper contributes to setting the research agenda on vaccine cold chains and connects humanitarian logistics to technology, information management and decision making. Originality/value This paper presents the humanitarian vaccine cold chain problem from an original angle by illuminating the implications of technology and information on the decisions made during the planning and implementation phases of a vaccine campaign. The authors develop an agenda to provide researchers and humanitarians with a perspective to improve cold chain planning and implementation at the intersection of technology, information and decisions.

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Humanitarian supply chains (HSCs) contribute significantly to achieving effective and rapid responses to natural and man-made disasters. Though humanitarian organizations have during the last decades made considerable efforts to improve the response to crises in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, HSCs are still faced with so many challenges, one of which is the incorporation of sustainability dimensions (economic, social and environmental) in the management of their supply chains. In the literature, some authors have highlighted that the planning and achievement of sustainability performance objectives in humanitarian operations is hindered by the lack of decision support systems (DSS). Therefore, this paper proposes a multi-objective Master Planning DSS for managing sustainable HSCs. This Master Planning DSS includes: (1) the definition of a set of metrics for measuring the performance of a sustainable HSC; (2) an algorithm to solve the multi-objective problem; and (3) a Master Planning mathematical model to support the tactical planning of the sustainable HSC. Using the information gathered from field research and the literature, an illustrative numerical example is presented to demonstrate the implementation and utility of the proposed DSS. The results show that the order in which the three sustainability dimensions (economic, social B Uche Okongwu

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