Research Directions in Information Systems for Humanitarian Logistics

This article systematically reviews the literature on using IT (Information Technology) in humanitarian logistics focusing on disaster relief operations. We first discuss problems in humanitarian relief logistics. We then identify the stage and disaster type for each article as well as the article’s research methodology and research contribution. Finally, we identify potential future research directions

Understanding the UK hospital supply chain in an era of patient choice

Author Posting © Westburn Publishers Ltd, 2011. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy-edit version of an article which has been published in its definitive form in the Journal of Marketing Management, and has been posted by permission of Westburn Publishers Ltd for personal use, not for redistribution. The article was published in Journal of Marketing Management, 27(3-4), 401 - 423, doi:10.1080/0267257X.2011.547084 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2011.547084The purpose of this paper is to investigate the UK hospital supply chain in light of recent government policy reform where patients will have, inter alia, greater choice of hospital for elective surgery. Subsequently, the hospital system should become far more competitive with supply chains having to react to these changes as patient demand becomes less predictable. Using a qualitative case study methodology, hospital managers are interviewed on a range of issues. Views on the development of the hospital supply chain in different phases are derived, and are used to develop a map of the current hospital chain. The findings show hospital managers anticipating some significant changes to the hospital supply chain and its workings as Patient Choice expands. The research also maps the various aspects of the hospital supply chain as it moves through different operational phases and highlights underlying challenges and complexities. The hospital supply chain, as discussed and mapped in this research, is original work given there are no examples in the literature that provide holistic representations of hospital activity. At the end, specific recommendations are provided that will be of interest to service to managers, researchers, and policymakers

Study on cash transfers for seed security in humanitarian settings

This study examines the barriers and opportunities for cash transfers to be used to address seed security in humanitarian situations. Cash, while not a new approach, has gained momentum in recent years, especially with the emergence of the Cash Learning Partnership (CaLP) and humanitarian organizations’ commitments through the Grand Bargain.2 Historically, direct seed distribution (DSD) has dominated agricultural responses in emergencies. While effective in many situations, other modalities of addressing farmers’ needs have also proven to be effective, including seed and voucher fairs and, increasingly, cash transfer responses. The latter response typically provides farmers greater choices to make decisions about their seed needs and preferences. However, as with direct distribution and vouchers, cash can be a viable option but may not always be appropriate in every situation. The quality of seed is of paramount importance in choosing a response and has been an ongoing (and often contentious and political) discussion for decades. The results of this study advocate for a multi- stakeholder perspective on the quality of seed, while offering farmers the most flexible and most appropriate response possible for their given situation. In some cases, this will be cash transfers, but certainly not in all cases. A range of options offers the best chance for a successful, responsive, and appropriate program. The evidence base on outcomes from using cash for seed in humanitarian contexts is limited, however, reviewing a series of examples shows the breadth and range of options that are being explored. The cases from an array of organizations and countries including Iraq, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Madagascar, and Guatemala, show that understanding the context is key to the response analysis and the choice of modality. Organizational approaches and previous experience also played a role in the choice of modality. The evidence to date shows that cash, in addition to complementary programming such as technical or business training, offers promise for seed security interventions. In addition, initiatives to support both the demand and supply side of the market have proven to be effective. Key findings include: 1. Market and needs assessments must include a seed component or SSSA to ensure a response designed to address the right problem, not the assumption. For markets, both informal and formal seed markets need to be included. 2. Good needs assessments, response analysis and program design help ensure participants’ spending cash on what implementers anticipate they will. 3. Program participants’ preferences on modalities are not consistently included in response analysis. 4. Mixed modalities (cash and vouchers, or cash and DSD) can broaden crop choices. 5. Quality screenings for seed are taking place; the quality of seed is important to organizations and project participants. 6. Cash for seed security interventions are limited, but growing in prevalence. 7. Providing cash plus complementary support is a promising practice for fostering seed security. 8. The nexus between relief and development is critical—designing projects with a longer-term development view: cash can prepare the way for farmers to continue true market engagement post-relief, spur business development in subsequent seasons, and offer opportunities for financial inclusion. 9. Supporting supply side to bring quality seed markets ‘closer’ to project participants should be considered along with demand-side interventions (cash, voucher and other). 10. Investment in preparedness provides a better foundation to implement impactful cash for seed security response. The risks, mitigating actions, opportunities and enablers for cash and seed security response are also explored. The study concludes with actionable and practical recommendations for further advancing the evidence base, as well as implementation suggestions. Continuous collaboration of key stakeholders in seed systems is essential to advance the discussions and action on the way forward with cash and seed systems

Big data and humanitarian supply networks: Can Big Data give voice to the voiceless?

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright © 2013 IEEE.Billions of US dollars are spent each year in emergency aid to save lives and alleviate the suffering of those affected by disaster. This aid flows through a humanitarian system that consists of governments, different United Nations agencies, the Red Cross movement and myriad non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As scarcer resources, financial crisis and economic inter-dependencies continue to constrain humanitarian relief there is an increasing focus from donors and governments to assess the impact of humanitarian supply networks. Using commercial (`for-profit') supply networks as a benchmark; this paper exposes the counter-intuitive competition dynamic of humanitarian supply networks, which results in an open-loop system unable to calibrate supply with actual need and impact. In that light, the phenomenon of Big Data in the humanitarian field is discussed and an agenda for the `datafication' of the supply network set out as a means of closing the loop between supply, need and impact

To Greener Pastures: An Action Research Study on the Environmental Sustainability of Humanitarian Supply Chains

Purpose: While humanitarian supply chains (HSCs) inherently contribute to social sustainability by alleviating the suffering of afflicted communities, their unintended adverse environmental impact has been overlooked hitherto. This paper draws upon contingency theory to synthesize green practices for HSCs, identify the contingency factors that impact on greening HSCs and explore how focal humanitarian organizations (HOs) can cope with such contingency factors. Design/methodology/approach: Deploying an action research methodology, two-and-a-half cycles of collaboration between researchers and a United Nations agency were completed. The first half-cycle developed a deductive greening framework, synthesizing extant green practices from the literature. In the second and third cycles, green practices were adopted/customized/developed reflecting organizational and contextual contingency factors. Action steps were implemented in the HSC for prophylactics, involving an operational mix of disaster relief and development programs. Findings: First, the study presents a greening framework that synthesizes extant green practices in a suitable form for HOs. Second, it identifies the contingency factors associated with greening HSCs regarding funding environment, stakeholders, field of activity and organizational management. Third, it outlines the mechanisms for coping with the contingency factors identified, inter alia, improving the visibility of headquarters over field operations, promoting collaboration and resource sharing with other HOs as well as among different implementing partners in each country, and working with suppliers for greener packaging. The study advances a set of actionable propositions for greening HSCs. Practical implications: Using an action research methodology, the study makes strong practical contributions. Humanitarian practitioners can adopt the greening framework and the lessons learnt from the implementation cycles presented in this study. Originality/value: This is one of the first empirical studies to integrate environmental sustainability and HSCs using an action research methodology

Robust optimisation of urban drought security for an uncertain climate

Abstract Recent experience with drought and a shifting climate has highlighted the vulnerability of urban water supplies to “running out of water” in Perth, south-east Queensland, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide and has triggered major investment in water source infrastructure which ultimately will run into tens of billions of dollars. With the prospect of continuing population growth in major cities, the provision of acceptable drought security will become more pressing particularly if the future climate becomes drier. Decision makers need to deal with significant uncertainty about future climate and population. In particular the science of climate change is such that the accuracy of model predictions of future climate is limited by fundamental irreducible uncertainties. It would be unwise to unduly rely on projections made by climate models and prudent to favour solutions that are robust across a range of possible climate futures. This study presents and demonstrates a methodology that addresses the problem of finding “good” solutions for urban bulk water systems in the presence of deep uncertainty about future climate. The methodology involves three key steps: 1) Build a simulation model of the bulk water system; 2) Construct replicates of future climate that reproduce natural variability seen in the instrumental record and that reflect a plausible range of future climates; and 3) Use multi-objective optimisation to efficiently search through potentially trillions of solutions to identify a set of “good” solutions that optimally trade-off expected performance against robustness or sensitivity of performance over the range of future climates. A case study based on the Lower Hunter in New South Wales demonstrates the methodology. It is important to note that the case study does not consider the full suite of options and objectives; preliminary information on plausible options has been generalised for demonstration purposes and therefore its results should only be used in the context of evaluating the methodology. “Dry” and “wet” climate scenarios that represent the likely span of climate in 2070 based on the A1F1 emissions scenario were constructed. Using the WATHNET5 model, a simulation model of the Lower Hunter was constructed and validated. The search for “good” solutions was conducted by minimizing two criteria, 1) the expected present worth cost of capital and operational costs and social costs due to restrictions and emergency rationing, and 2) the difference in present worth cost between the “dry” and “wet” 2070 climate scenarios. The constraint was imposed that solutions must be able to supply (reduced) demand in the worst drought. Two demand scenarios were considered, “1.28 x current demand” representing expected consumption in 2060 and “2 x current demand” representing a highly stressed system. The optimisation considered a representative range of options including desalination, new surface water sources, demand substitution using rainwater tanks, drought contingency measures and operating rules. It was found the sensitivity of solutions to uncertainty about future climate varied considerably. For the “1.28 x demand” scenario there was limited sensitivity to the climate scenarios resulting in a narrow range of trade-offs. In contrast, for the “2 x demand” scenario, the trade-off between expected present worth cost and robustness was considerable. The main policy implication is that (possibly large) uncertainty about future climate may not necessarily produce significantly different performance trajectories. The sensitivity is determined not only by differences between climate scenarios but also by other external stresses imposed on the system such as population growth and by constraints on the available options to secure the system against drought. Recent experience with drought and a shifting climate has highlighted the vulnerability of urban water supplies to “running out of water” in Perth, south-east Queensland, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide and has triggered major investment in water source infrastructure which ultimately will run into tens of billions of dollars. With the prospect of continuing population growth in major cities, the provision of acceptable drought security will become more pressing particularly if the future climate becomes drier. Decision makers need to deal with significant uncertainty about future climate and population. In particular the science of climate change is such that the accuracy of model predictions of future climate is limited by fundamental irreducible uncertainties. It would be unwise to unduly rely on projections made by climate models and prudent to favour solutions that are robust across a range of possible climate futures. This study presents and demonstrates a methodology that addresses the problem of finding “good” solutions for urban bulk water systems in the presence of deep uncertainty about future climate. The methodology involves three key steps: 1) Build a simulation model of the bulk water system; 2) Construct replicates of future climate that reproduce natural variability seen in the instrumental record and that reflect a plausible range of future climates; and 3) Use multi-objective optimisation to efficiently search through potentially trillions of solutions to identify a set of “good” solutions that optimally trade-off expected performance against robustness or sensitivity of performance over the range of future climates. A case study based on the Lower Hunter in New South Wales demonstrates the methodology. It is important to note that the case study does not consider the full suite of options and objectives; preliminary information on plausible options has been generalised for demonstration purposes and therefore its results should only be used in the context of evaluating the methodology. “Dry” and “wet” climate scenarios that represent the likely span of climate in 2070 based on the A1F1 emissions scenario were constructed. Using the WATHNET5 model, a simulation model of the Lower Hunter was constructed and validated. The search for “good” solutions was conducted by minimizing two criteria, 1) the expected present worth cost of capital and operational costs and social costs due to restrictions and emergency rationing, and 2) the difference in present worth cost between the “dry” and “wet” 2070 climate scenarios. The constraint was imposed that solutions must be able to supply (reduced) demand in the worst drought. Two demand scenarios were considered, “1.28 x current demand” representing expected consumption in 2060 and “2 x current demand” representing a highly stressed system. The optimisation considered a representative range of options including desalination, new surface water sources, demand substitution using rainwater tanks, drought contingency measures and operating rules. It was found the sensitivity of solutions to uncertainty about future climate varied considerably. For the “1.28 x demand” scenario there was limited sensitivity to the climate scenarios resulting in a narrow range of trade-offs. In contrast, for the “2 x demand” scenario, the trade-off between expected present worth cost and robustness was considerable. The main policy implication is that (possibly large) uncertainty about future climate may not necessarily produce significantly different performance trajectories. The sensitivity is determined not only by differences between climate scenarios but also by other external stresses imposed on the system such as population growth and by constraints on the available options to secure the system against drought. Please cite this report as: Mortazavi, M, Kuczera, G, Kiem, AS, Henley, B, Berghout, B,Turner, E, 2013 Robust optimisation of urban drought security for an uncertain climate. National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Gold Coast, pp. 74

Understanding The Decision-Making Process of Local Level Emergency Managers and Future Impacts of Social Data

During the course of a natural disaster, affected populations turn to different avenues to attempt to communicate their needs and locations while emergency managers are faced with the task of making quick decisions to aid in the response effort. The decisions that emergency managers face are affected by factors such as available resources, responder safety, and source of information. In this research, we interview emergency managers about the 2009 North American Ice Storm and a flooding event in late April of 2017 to understand the decisions made and the factors that affected these decisions. Using these interviews, a list of interview questions using the Critical Decision Method were created that could be used to more deeply understand the decisions and decision-making process of a local-level emergency manager during a disaster response event. Additionally, animations were created to illustrate the comparative effectiveness of disaster response routing plans developed with and without the consideration of social data based on data inspired by a real event

Improving access to health services – Challenges in Lean application

Purpose: Healthcare organisations face significant productivity pressures and are undergoing major service transformation. This paper serves to disseminate findings from a Lean healthcare project using a NHS Single Point of Access environment as the case study. It demonstrates the relevance and extent that Lean can be applied to this type of healthcare service setting. Design/methodology/approach: Action research was applied and Lean tools used to establish current state processes, identify wastes and develop service improvement opportunities based upon defined customer values. Findings: The quality of referral information was found to be the root cause of a number of process wastes and causes of failure for the service. Understanding the relationship and the nature of interaction between the service‟s customer/supplier led to more effective and sustainable service improvement opportunities and the co-creation of value. It was also recognised that not all the Lean principles could be applied to this type of healthcare setting. Practical implications: The study is useful to organisations using Lean to undertake service improvement activities. The paper outlines how extending the value stream beyond the organisation to include suppliers can lead to improved co-production and generation of service value. Originality/value: The study contributes to service productivity research by demonstrating the relevance and limitations of Lean application in a new healthcare service setting. The case study demonstrates the practical challenges of implementing Lean in reciprocal service design models and adds validity to existing contextual models