Disaster preparedness has been recognized as a central element in reducing the impact of disasters worldwide. The usual methods of preparedness, such as pre-positioning relief inventory in countries prone to disasters, are problematic because they require high investment in various locations, due to the uncertainty about the timing and location of the next disaster. Investing in disaster manage...

Humanitarian organizations pre-position relief items in pre-disaster and distribute them to the affected areas in post-disaster. Improper planning of emergency operations causes more deaths in post-disaster. In this paper, the problem of relief item pre-positioning and multi-period distribution planning is addressed considering lateral transhipment among distribution centres to improve the effi...

Disaster relief presents many unique logistics challenges, with problems including damaged transportation infrastructure, limited communication, and coordination of multiple agents. Central to disaster relief logistics is the distribution of life-saving commodities to beneficiaries. Operations research models have potential to help relief agencies save lives and money, maintain standards of hum...

A post disaster situation demands an efficient communication and coordination among rescue teams. Exchange of real time information among responders and emergency management centers is crucial for saving lives. In such scenario, MANETs are suitable for providing communication mechanism, as they are easy to deploy and do not require elaborate infrastructure. In this paper, we have considered tha...

Social media is becoming popular as a key source of information on disasters and crisis situations. Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief (HADR) respondents can gain valuable insights and situational awareness by monitoring social mediabased feeds. Specifically, the use of microblogs (i.e., Twitter) has been shown to provide new information not otherwise attainable. In this paper, we present a n...

We conducted in-depth interviews with 11 Korean Disaster Relief Team (KDRT) members about stress related to disaster relief work and analyzed the interview data using the Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) method in order to evaluate difficulties in disaster relief work and to develop solutions to these problems in cooperation with related organizations. Results showed that members typically...

The Philippines is one of the countries in the world vulnerable to natural hazards because of its geographic location. It also lacks an efficient disaster management system that will help in times of need. One common scenario during disasters is that the activity of rescue and relief is not well-coordinated. For this reason, there is a need for a system that will help in the efficient provision...

This paper presents a multi-objective model for location-transportation problem under uncertainty that has been developed to respond to crisis. In the proposed model, humanitarian aid distribution centers (HADC), the number and location of them, the amount of relief goods stored in distribution centers, the amount of relief goods sent to the disaster zone, the number of injured people transferr...

A large amount of medical waste is produced during disaster relief, posing a potential hazard to the habitat and the environment. A comprehensive understanding of the composition and characteristics of medical waste that requires management is one of the most basic steps in the development of a plan for medical waste management. Unfortunately, limited reliable information is available in the op...

INTRODUCTION During the last decades, several humanitarian emergencies have occurred, with an increasing number of humanitarian organizations taking part in providing assistance. However, need assessments, medical intelligence, and coordination of the aid often are sparse, resulting in the provision of ineffective and expensive assistance. When an earthquake with the strength of 7.7 on the Rich...