Humanitarian relief chain: Rapid response under uncertainty

After a disaster, supplies must be efficiently and equitably distributed to those in need, wounded persons must be evacuated to triage centers, and relief workers must be transported to affected areas. This complex humanitarian relief problem requires the coordination of numerous vehicles of varying capacities to transport goods, disaster victims, and volunteer workers through a network of roads, some of which may be impassable. To address this problem, a detailed mathematical programming model is presented. Owing to the complexity of this formulation, only small‐scale problem instances may be solved optimally via commercial solver software. Therefore, a new heuristic approach is proposed to solve problems of practical size within acceptable time restrictions. The performance of the heuristic is evaluated for numerous representative test instances.

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“…Examples of such studies include Sheu (, 2010). Similarly, Chakravarty (), Fiedrich et al. (), Gong and Batta (), and Arora et al.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 84%

Vehicle routing and resource distribution in postdisaster humanitarian relief operations

Theeb

Murray

2016

Int Trans Operational Res

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“…We denote s as the value of a life saved, and ϕ ( τ ) the disutility (or misery) of delaying the delivery of supplies by τ time periods (days), also known as the deprivation cost. As in Chakravarty (), we denote s ( τ ) as the adjusted social value of a life saved where s ( τ ) = s − ϕ ( τ ), s ( τ ) ≥ 0. Holguin‐Veras et al (2013) suggest minimization of deprivation cost as a possible objective of humanitarian effort.…”

Section: The Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, both the levee-age and the frequency of failures are important factors in assessing the effectiveness of a levee system. Risk mitigation Levee for protection, and supplies for relief (Kunz et al, 2014) Levee for protection and no supplies (Carter, 2005;Galloway et al, 2013) Predisaster procurement of supplies, only if levee capacity is below a threshold No risk mitigation Disaster response only with relief supplies (Balcik et al, 2010;Chakravarty, 2014;Richardson et al, 2010) No action for disaster management Postdisaster procurement of supplies, only if hurricane severity exceeds a threshold (Chakravarty, 2011) As a levee can last several years, levee construction has a longer term connotation. The relief provider, on the other hand, has (typically) a 1-year planning horizon.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanitarian response to hurricane disasters: Coordinating flood‐risk mitigation with fundraising and relief operations

Chakravarty

2018

Naval Research Logistics

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To alleviate flooding, caused by hurricanes, governments build structural barriers called levees. In addition, relief providers such as the nongovernmental organizations and charities raise funds, and procure and deliver supplies (food, water, and medicines) for humanitarian relief. The strategy for managing disasters must, therefore, weigh the costs and benefits of building levees as well as procuring and delivering supplies. We use a three‐stage decision making framework to study how the investment in levee capacity can be integrated with supply procurements, fundraising, and rapid response. One of our major findings is that a large fundraising cost discourages postdisaster funding, implying relatively large investments in levee and prepositioned supplies. That notwithstanding, a large social value (of saving life) can tilt the balance in favor of postdisaster funding. If the levee capacity increases, funding for predisaster procurement is reduced without affecting postdisaster funding. For a sufficiently large increase in capacity, however, postdisaster response becomes superfluous. We also find that hurricane uncertainty motivates levees with large capacity. In contrast, levee‐failures motivate levees with small capacity.

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“…Purchasing relief supplies immediately after a disaster brings flexibility (i.e., the order can be initiated after the demand is clear), which reduces the loss caused by demand uncertainty (Chakravarty, 2014). However, the downside is the high unit price and the potential unavailability of supply.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%