This research will develop a cyber-enabled discovery system, integrating state of the art thinking and methodologies from computer, transportation, mathematical, and social sciences, for management of logistics in humanitarian responses to disasters. It will (1) create new paradigms of humanitarian logistic models that explicitly consider two key aspects not studied by the current techniques: non-hysteretic deprivation costs (lack of access to a given good or service), and materiel convergence (physical movement of supplies and equipment); (2) develop appropriate models to represent human suffering as a deprivation cost; (3) develop analytical models to quantify and influence the amount, type, and arrival patterns of donations; (4) gain insight into the links between media framing of needs and materiel convergence; (5) define mechanisms to modify donor behavior; and, (6) develop algorithms and heuristics to solve these formulations. This will lead to models that correctly consider the impacts of logistic decisions on the impacted populations, more effective delivery strategies, more coordinated and effective relief flows, and less congestion at entry points.
This research is an ambitious and transformative effort to build a holistic, quantitative understanding of how humanitarian logistics should consider deprivation costs and emergent donor response to disasters. This is based on state of the art economic, logistic, and social science research into the impacts of delivery actions, media portrayal of disaster events, and response needs. The core impact of this research will be improved allocation and delivery of critical supplies during disaster response, as well as better coordination with emergent distributed donor sites, leading to improvement of the nation?s emergency response capabilities. The research team will maximize the broader impacts through: (1) the integration of research into undergraduate and graduate courses; (2) the involvement of undergraduate and graduate students as research assistants; (3) the use of outreach events to communicate research results to undergraduate and high school students and stimulate them into research; (4) the recruitment of women and minority students; and (5) the dissemination of project findings among professionals and researchers with interest in humanitarian logistics and disaster response.
