Building a Sustainable and Resilient U.S. Disaster Response and Relief Logistics System: Lessons from Domestic and International Events

Abstract

The United States (U.S.) has experienced frequent and severe natural disasters in recent time. This has in turn uncovered significant challenges in disaster relief and emergency response systems, particularly in the area of logistics. These challenges often lead to delays, inefficiencies and environmental consequences. Hence, creating a two-sided challenge, that requires both sustainability initiatives as well as a resilient Logistics system to fix. The lessons learned from prior domestic and international occurrences such as Hurricane Katrina, the 2011 Japan tsunami, and the Haiti earthquake presents the basis for the paper to examine the weaknesses and develop means of improving the current system. Therefore, this paper focuses on how the U.S. can improve its disaster response and relief system while building a resilient logistics system through unique strategies and recommendations inspired by the lessons learned from previous happenings. The recommendations for improvement include the implementation of green technologies, the decentralization of the system, improved public-private partnerships, and the optimization of the supply chain through the uses of predictive analytics and blockchain technology (Ahmed et al., 2024; Bealt et al., 2016; Hoshiba & Ozaki, 2014).