A novel humanitarian and private sector relief chain network design model for disaster response

Abstract

The private sector is widely regarded as a useful element in the emergency response to disasters. Humanitarian organizations tend to cooperate with the private sector to deliver aids to affected areas and mitigate the complexity of disasters. In this paper, we propose an efficient relief chain consisting of a humanitarian organization (HO) and third-party logistics providers (3PLPs) to tackle the issue of decentralized planning and decision-making in humanitarian logistics. The relief chain is expected to benefit both the HO and the 3PLPs. To this end, we developed a novel bi-level two-stage multi-objective stochastic programming model. The robust equivalent of the proposed model is also developed to cope with uncertainty. A Benders decomposition algorithm is tailored to solve large-scale problems. An actual earthquake is investigated as case-study to test the model's real-world applicability. Finally, a number of managerial insights are inferred by analyzing the findings of this research.