Secure RFID for Humanitarian Logistics

Abstract

Extreme events like hurricanes, flooding and earthquakes cause massive disruption to society, including large death tolls and property damage. In recent years, many events like the Katrina disaster Katrina (2004) have shown the importance of efficient disaster management to alleviate the resulting pain and suffering and to mitigate the consequences of the disaster. Disaster management includes a large set of activities including the care of the survivors needs, protection of assets from any further damage and provision of shelter, water, food, and medicines to dislocated people. The creation of an effective disaster supply chain to deliver necessary goods to disaster relief organizations is an essential function of disaster management. This function is also called humanitarian logistics. Humanitarian logistics is a wide term that covers the operations concerning supply chain strategies, processes, and technologies that will maintain the flow of goods and material needed for the humanitarian. The management of the supply chain in disaster relief operations is considered an essential element in the resolution of a crisis since the Tsunami in South East Asia (December, 26th 2004) and the Katrina Hurricane (August, 2005). The scale of these disasters is huge both in geographical size and in severity. The Katrina Hurricane affected 92,000 square miles of land Gardner (2006) and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced from their homes. In a recent report Fritz (2005), it was highlighted that most of the organizations involved in the 2004 tsunami disaster were lacking in supply chain expertise and technology. Humanitarian logistics is indeed a very challenging task for many organizations for a number or reasons, which will be described in this chapter. For example, natural disasters are usually characterized by a chaotic environment and by a general lack of transportation infrastructures, which are usually degraded or destroyed. Many different organizations may be involved with no a-priori coordination plan defined. All these challenges make the task of humanitarian relief organizations very difficult. Traditional mechanisms and processes implemented in commercial supply chains may not be directly adapted to humanitarian logistics because of these challenges and because of the different operational requirements. Timing constraints are much more severe in disaster supply chain than commercial supply chains because of the potential loss in human lives and assets if essential equipment is not distributed in time. In other cases, specific processes and technologies can be tailored to humanitarian logistics. Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) technology has already been identified as a powerful Secure RFID for Humanitarian Logistics