The impact of Mean Time Between Disasters on inventory pre-positioning strategy

Purpose - This paper addresses the impact of Mean Time Between Disasters (MTBD) to inventory pre-positioning strategy of medical supplies prior to a sudden-onset disaster

Performance Trade-offs in Layouts For Relief Centers

At a disaster affected region, relief centers distribute critical supplies and aid to the affected victims. Unlike traditional distribution centers, relief centers experience significant ‘crowd effects’ due to the sudden influx of victims in a confined space. Using knowledge from studies on pedestrian traffic flow, specialized state dependent queuing models are developed to model the flow of victims along the walkways setup at a relief center. The underlying queuing network model is analyzed to derive expressions for the average times that victims experience before they receive the service at the relief center. The research shows that crowd density effects lead to significant increase in congestion and queuing delays underscoring the importance of developing specialized queuing models that assess the impact of congestion effects on alternative layouts of relief centers

Stock Prepositioning For Disasters In Mexico: A Case

Different governments are recurring to stock prepositioning to improve immediate disaster response because it can reduce procurement delays and distribution lead-time. However, it can be an expensive policy. Mexico has used this policy for several years with poor results. The purpose of this research is to integrate GIS and optimisation for the analysis of the location of warehousing facilities and prepositioning of stock at a national level. The system was tested using data obtained from Mexican disaster authorities and compared to the current policy, showing better coverage in terms of quality and a reduction of shipment time for several areas

STUDI LITERATUR: Analisis Distribusi Masalah Lokasi Fasilitas untuk Logistik Bantuan Kemanusiaan

Bencana adalah setiap peristiwa atau kejadian yang disebabkan oleh faktor alam dan/atau faktor non alam yang dapat mengakibatkan timbulnya kerusakan lingkungan, kerugian harta benda, gangguan ekologis, dan hilangnya jiwa manusia. Model pada masalah lokasi fasilitas yang terkait dengan model optimasi logistik merupakan pendekatan penting dalam manajemen bencana. Studi literatur ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis penerapan metode eksak dan metode heuristik tersebut dalam menentukan distribusi masalah lokasi fasilitas untuk logistik bantuan kemanusiaan. Metode yang dilakukan melalui penelusuran artikel pada situs Google Scholar, Science Direct, dan Informs Journal. Hasil penelurusan adalah mendapatkan 12 artikel yang memenuhi kriteria untuk dikaji. Penerapan untuk metode eksak dan metode heuristik dapat dilakukan secara terpisah maupun dikolaborasikan untuk mendapatkan solusi dari model yang sudah dibangun. Solusi yang diperoleh melalui metode eksak merupakan hasil optimal, namun untuk kasus dengan skala besar dan masalah yang rumit, metode heuristik dapat digunakan. Metode heuristik memungkinkan waktu penyelesaian solusi lebih cepat jika dibandingkan dengan metode eksak

Gaps Between Research and Practice in Humanitarian Logistics

This paper, which compares humanitarian logistics research with needs in practice, has two key objectives. The first is to provide an overview of recent humanitarian operations and logistics research in the OR/MS field in order to set a foundation of academic contributions. The second builds upon the first by outlining the gaps between research and needs in practice in order to offer insights and motivate areas that could benefit from additional analysis and collaboration

Buttressing Supply Chains against Floods in Asia for Humanitarian Relief and Economic Recovery

Floods are the most frequent category of disasters worldwide. Among all geographic regions, Asia has suffered the most. While there are several ongoing humanitarian efforts and initiatives, we believe there is a new opportunity to coordinate “last mile” humanitarian efforts in the event of a flood using micro-retailers. Because micro-retailers are the “last mile” nodes in traditional retail supply chains in many Asian countries, we propose the use of social enterprise to buttress these supply chains for distribution of essential goods by coordinating with micro-retailers before and after floods. We also present a stylized model to quantify the benefits of doing so

Pre-positioning inventory and service outsourcing of relief material supply chain

Service outsourcing is very common in a commercial supply chain, and in humanitarian relief area the transportation service is usually outsourced. To practice relief supply more effectively, it seems essential to enlarge outsourcing from shipping to more areas, and private enterprises could play a vital role. This paper examines the optimal pre-disaster order quantity of a certain relief commodity, based on a two-stage coordinated approach. Our findings show that the delay cost, shortage penalty cost, risk of supply shortage, salvage value, expected perishable rate, unit inventory cost and reactive price have significant impacts on the optimal amount of propositioned inventory. Moreover, the outsourcing strategies differ by types of relief commodities. For perishable supplies, proactive or reactive outsourcing would improve the benefits of buyer and supplier simultaneously. As for imperishable supplies, it is better to combine proactive insourcing approach and reactive outsourcing strategy. In view of some supplies whose monitoring cost is high, the insourcing approach is much better than outsourcing approach

The application of firefly algorithm in an adaptive emergency evacuation centre management (AEECM) for dynamic relocation of flood victims

Flood evacuation centre is defined as a temporary location or area of people from disaster particularly flood as a rescue or precautionary measure. Gazetted evacuation centres are normally located at secure places which have small chances from being drowned by flood.However, due to extreme flood several evacuation centres in Kelantan were unexpectedly drowned.Currently, there is no study done on proposing a decision support aid to reallocate victims and resources of the evacuation centre when the situation getting worsens.Therefore, this study proposes a decision aid model to be utilized in realizing an adaptive emergency evacuation centre management system. This study undergoes two main phases; development of algorithm and models, and development of a web-based and mobile app.The proposed model operates using Firefly multi-objective optimization algorithm that creates an optimal schedule for the relocation of victims and resources for an evacuation centre.The proposed decision aid model and the adaptive system can be applied in supporting the National Security Council’s respond mechanisms for handling disaster management level II (State level) especially in providing better management of the flood evacuating centres

Toward resilient humanitarian cooperation: examining the performance of horizontal cooperation among humanitarian organizations using an agent-based modeling (ABM) approach

This article proposes a multi-agent simulation model to examine how different operational environments and incentive mechanisms affect the collective performance of complex humanitarian response systems. Using the UN Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD) system as an example, a stylized model of one service provider, two member organizations and multiple humanitarian crises is developed to illustrate the changing uses of four alternative relief goods sourcing options, namely: i) own storage for own items ii) UN storage for own items iii) stock-swaps and iv) white stock uses. Under the plausible assumption that the past success of sourcing options influences member organizations' future resource allocation, the model indicates that the additional buffer stock capacity offered by horizontal cooperation induces undesirable system dependency: while it gives member organizations more flexibility to meet highly stochastic demands under uncertainty, it also encourage them to store less of their own relief goods as a result. This tendency was particularly notable under a flexible budgeting regime, highlighting the further need to understand and evaluate the details of the decision-making heuristics of individual member organizations