Humanitarian logistics

[kenneth]

The 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean caused an immense tidal wave, that wreaked havoc in large parts of South-East Asia, killing thousands of people and leaving tens of thousands
more homeless. In the aftermath of this event, an enormous amount of aid from all over the world was shipped to the region, first to feed and shelter the needy, and later to help rebuild
the countries hit by the tragic event. The sheer magnitude of the logistics involved in getting food, tents, medical supplies, e tc. to the disaster scene in turn caused tremendous problems, not in the least because of the poor state of the infrastructure. The problem was not that there was not enough aid, but that it was impossible to get the right goods in the right quantities at the right time in the right place.
W hile there are of course important differces, the logistics operations of disaster recovery are in some ways very similar to those studied in the fields of operations research and supply
chain management. It appears that important transfers of knowledge might be possible from these business-oriented fields in order to support humanitarian operations.

In this research we will look into a specific humanitarian disaster recovery situation and investigate the usefulness of operations research in this area. We will study the relevant literature on the topic and focus on the differences between business and humanitarian logistics and build models and methods to optimize humanitarian logistics problems.