Integrating pre and post-disaster activities for designing an equitable humanitarian relief supply chain

Abstract

The design of an efficient humanitarian relief supply chain (HRSC) for disaster management depends on the integration of pre- and post-disaster decisions, which reduces the suffering of the victims and saves lives. The use of strategies such as quantity flexibility contracts in the pre-disaster phase and evacuation management in the post-disaster phase significantly increase the efficiency of HRSCs for disaster management. Therefore, in this paper, for the first time, a comprehensive two-stage stochastic mixed-integer linear programming model is presented for integrating the pre- and post-disaster activities for possible disasters such as floods and earthquakes by considering quantity flexibility contract and equitable relief goods distribution. In addition, the proposed model determines the location of warehouses and inventory levels in these warehouses in the pre-disaster phase. It also deals with public donations and budget planning, planning vehicles and helicopters, locating hospitals and shelters, and optimizing the inventory flow between echelons in the post-disaster phase. In the proposed model, the quantity flexibility contract is applied to decrease the inventory level in the pre-disaster phase, and reduce the supply risk in the post-disaster phase. The efficiency and performance of the proposed model are evaluated using the data related to a possible earthquake in Karaj (one of the metropolises of Iran).