Location of temporary depots to facilitate relief operations after an earthquake

The type of humanitarian logistics problem of interest is an earthquake with significant damage, prioritized items for delivery, and an extensive time period over which supplies need to be delivered. The problem of interest is an outgrowth of a recent paper by [10], where they focused on supplying r...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Socio-economic planning sciences 2012-06, Vol.46 (2), p.112-123
Main Authors: Lin, Yen-Hung, Batta, Rajan, Rogerson, Peter A., Blatt, Alan, Flanigan, Marie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aid coordination
Case studies
Disaster relief
Distributed-supply
Earthquakes
Facility location
Humanitarian intervention
Humanitarian logistics
Logistics
Operations research
Prioritizing delivery
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The type of humanitarian logistics problem of interest is an earthquake with significant damage, prioritized items for delivery, and an extensive time period over which supplies need to be delivered. The problem of interest is an outgrowth of a recent paper by [10], where they focused on supplying relief items from a central depot for a prolonged period of time. The drawback of their approach is that long travel distances of vehicles are required between demand points and the central depot. In this paper, we propose the location of temporary depots around the disaster-affected area, along with the required vehicles and resources, to improve logistical efficiency. A two-phase heuristic approach is proposed; it locates temporary depots and allocates covered demand points to an open depot in Phase I, and explores the best logistics performance under the given solution from Phase I in Phase II. Results from computational experiments and an earthquake case study are used to illustrate the benefits of this approach. ► Location of temporary depots around a disaster-affected area. ► Improvement of logistical efficiency in disaster relief. ► Case study based on earthquake scenario in Southern California.
ISSN:0038-0121
1873-6041
DOI:10.1016/j.seps.2012.01.001