Capacity acquisition and PPE distribution planning during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

As demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) surged during the COVID-19 pandemic and healthcare facilities faced supply shortages, the availability and distribution of PPE, being critical in fighting the pandemic, required pooling resources from multiple sectors. We explore such a resource pooling problem and propose to build up capacity by acquiring distribution and storage capacity from private carriers in return for compensation. We present a capacity acquisition and PPE distribution planning model under sufficient supply to optimally acquire storage and distribution capacity from third parties to fulfill demand. We then consider insufficient supply and propose a priority-based model based on pandemic severity. Finally, we model uncertain demand through two-stage stochastic programming with recourse and solve it using Benders decomposition and sample average approximation. We build a test case for the province of Ontario, Canada and provide detailed analysis under varying supply and demand scenarios.