Pre-positioning of relief items under road/facility vulnerability with concurrent restoration and relief transportation

Abstract

Planning for response to sudden-onset disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, or floods needs to take into account the inherent uncertainties regarding the disaster and its impacts on the affected people as well as the logistics network. This paper focuses on the design of a multi-echelon humanitarian response network, where the pre-disaster decisions of warehouse location and item pre-positioning are subject to uncertainties in relief item demand and vulnerability of roads and facilities following the disaster. Once the disaster strikes, relief transportation is accompanied by simultaneous repair of blocked roads, which delays the transportation process, but gradually increases the connectivity of the network at the same time. A two-stage stochastic program is formulated to model this system and a sample average approximation (SAA) scheme is proposed for its heuristic solution. To enhance the efficiency of the SAA algorithm, we introduce a number of valid inequalities and bounds on the objective value. Computational experiments on a potential earthquake scenario in Istanbul, Turkey show that the SAA scheme is able to provide an accurate approximation of the objective function in reasonable time, and can help drive policy-based implications that may be applicable in preparation for similar potential disasters.

Pre-Positioning of a Relief Chain in Humanitarian Logistics Under Uncertainty in Road Accidents: A Real-Case Study

“…Aslan and Çelik [28] focused on the design of a multi-echelon humanitarian response network, in which the pre-disaster decisions of warehouse location and item pre-positioning were subject to uncertainties in relief item demand and the vulnerability of roads and facilities following the disaster. Once the disaster strikes, relief transportation is accompanied by the repair of blocked roads, which delays the transportation process, but gradually increases the connectivity of the network at the same time.…”

In search of network resilience: An optimization‐based view

“…This type of problem is one where robustness includes a measure as to how the system rebounds (Section 4) from the perturbation. The papers of Heath et al [103], Tan et al [206], Aslan and Çelik [15], Sanci and Daskin [185], and Fang et al [76] consider similar two‐stage problems where the robustness is measured based on how well the system rebounds after the perturbation and include decisions modeling the rebound process.…”

“…The uncertainty in the system is characterized by the necessary construction resources (e.g., cost, time) for a network design policy. Aslan and Çelik [15] formulate a two‐stage stochastic program for a multi‐echelon humanitarian response network. In the first stage of their model, they determine where to locate warehouses and preposition relief items.…”

A Mathematical Pre-Disaster Model with Uncertainty and Multiple Criteria for Facility Location and Network Fortification

“…Çelik [4] reviews the literature on network restoration and recovery in humanitarian operations. Aslan and Çelik [13] give in their research paper an overview of recent studies on emergency inventory propositioning involving uncertainty. Finally, the review paper by Sabbaghtorkan, Batta, and He is specialized on prepositioning of assets and supplies in disaster operations management [14].…”

“…In another recent study, Aslan and Çelik [13] propose a two-stage stochastic programming model to design a multi-echelon humanitarian response network. In the first stage, the model defines the location of the inventories and their capacity for each commodity.…”