Responding to large disasters and catastrophes is an extremely difficult endeavor. This challenge is a direct consequence of the devastating effects that disasters can produce on societies. These effects impact all facets of the socio-technical processes at the core of modern life. Disaster mitigation, preparedness, and response plans must be improved to minimize vulnerabilities, and to ensure that what is known can be leveraged to improve the effectiveness of future efforts. Disaster logistics should be a whole-society effort, where the civic and public sectors participate to minimize the negative impacts of disasters. Disaster researchers have already established that the civic society plays a major role in all aspects of the response to extreme events, from search and rescue and relief distribution, to rebuilding efforts. They are often credited with being the first respondents due to their proximity to the impacted area. These groups are a very heterogeneous collection of formal and informal organizations with different structures and levels of expertise in disaster response. Previous field work has also shown that the civic society can provide effective response to their communities by means of leveraging their connections to access logistical resources and efficiently respond to the disaster. Frequently, these groups delivered relief supplies faster, and more effectively, than any of the large relief organizations. On the other hand, the activities of some groups can prove troublesome, such as the gathering of donations of non-priority supplies. The reality is that the majority of the donations that arrive at a disaster site are non-priority goods that severely complicate disaster response efforts. The main goal of this project is to identify lessons, both positive and negative, that the disaster community should learn from the experiences of the civic society during the responses to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Identifying these lessons will help future disaster responders to conduct more effective operations, and reduce the impacts of disasters on local communities, the economy, and the environment. This project studies the socio-technical factors that hamper the integration of Non-Established Relief Groups (NERGs) efforts and that of relief efforts that come from the outside to help. In addition, the research provides crucial knowledge about the role that NERGs play in the humanitarian logistics, and about how best to structure the interactions among the established groups, the official response and the NERGs, for maximum effectiveness. The data collected about the difficulties of relief groups to deliver supplies will help identify mechanisms to prevent these problems from happening in future disasters. The research documents the logistic structures that emerge in support of relief/early recovery efforts after a major extreme event and enable future model development based on these different relief approaches. The findings enhance theoretical understandings of organizations participating in these extreme event environments.
The research focuses on both formal and informal mechanisms through which NERGs identify, gather, deliver, and distribute relief items. Data collection includes short and informal as well as in-depth interviews with individuals involved in the logistics efforts, at all levels of action (e.g., international, national, re-gional, local, and community levels), from NERGs, and at all levels of power. In order to gain better understandings about the motivations behind physical donations, the team creates a directory of donation drives taking place across the US to support the relief efforts. The goal is to conduct longitudinal tracking of their operations, and perform in-depth studies of how these efforts are created, their evolution, and their decision-making patterns. This effort serves as the basis for more in-depth behavioral research. The researchers promote multidisciplinary collaboration, engages undergraduate and graduate students,and disseminate and integrate research findings into disaster courses. Improving humanitarian logistics operations can reduce human suffering and loss of life in disasters.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
