The refugee camp management: a general framework and a unifying decision-making model

Abstract

Purpose Motivated by the increasing need to provide support to refugees, which remains as a pressing issue in the agenda of many countries, the purpose of this paper is to consider the refugee camp management problem. Although each of these countries may have different procedures shaped by their own culture, rules and regulations, the main structure of the problem can be modeled utilizing a general framework which will apply to different practices. Design/methodology/approach In this study, the authors consider the issue with an operations research (OR) perspective and provide such a framework utilizing Turkish Red Crescent (TRC)’s field expertise in many regions of the world. In the proposed framework, the overall refugee camp management problem is first categorized in two main phases: the establishment phase, which consists of one-time decisions like infrastructure design and the administration phase, which focuses on routine decisions that are taken on a periodic basis like aid distribution. Findings The authors then provide a unifying decision-making model for the establishment phase and detail the administrative phase via subcategories, linking the relevant problems to the OR literature. The proposed framework is general enough to be used by practitioners and to be utilized by the academicians to define new OR problems to the literature. Originality/value TRC’s know-how is very broad and extensive. Integrating that know-how with OR perspective, the authors provide a general framework that could be of use to practitioners as well as academicians. The proposed framework will constitute an example for countries of asylum and national or international NGOs to manage the refugee camps efficiently. The authors also highlight main challenges and dynamics of the decision-making problems encountered in different parts of the proposed framework, which may constitute many different problems to the OR literature each of which can open new venues for future research.

Aid Allocation for Camp‐Based and Urban Refugees with Uncertain Demand and Replenishments

“…Coordination between multiple humanitarian agencies is a major challenge in managing refugee operations (Dunn 2016, Karsu et al. 2019), and policies for inventory control and sharing with multiple agencies are more complicated than the case of a single relief agency due to associated costs. We consider a single type of aid in our study, however humanitarian agencies usually allocate multiple commodities, with perhaps varying demand rates.…”

Optimization for Secure and Humane Border Operations

“…Decisions on locating facilities have perhaps the greatest impact on the performance of relief operations in humanitarian crises, due to the direct relationship with response times and distribution costs. Key operational issues have been studied by researchers and linked to the broader operations research literature by referring to well-known location decision problems in collaboration with the Turkish Red Crescent [14]. A recent study thoroughly summarized various types of facility location challenges according to aspects such as the location space (continuous, network-based, discrete), the type of facilities (suppliers, distribution centers, shelters), the critical decision-makings criteria (equity, cost, reliability), and source of uncertainty (supply, demand, network) [15].…”

A Location Optimization Approach to Refugee Resettlement Decision-Making

“…The majority of the refugee studies deal with problems related to the establishment of refugee camps or their expansion to satisfy demand based on physical capacity, service requirements, and transportation [7]- [11]. These studies try to find the optimal size, site, layout, or infrastructure planning for the refugee camps.…”

“…That is, it ensures that the resettlement location will be put into service if a family is assigned to that location. Constraints (7) and ( 8) enforce the integer and binary nature of the decision variables, respectively.…”