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Humanitarian and Relief Logistics pp 77–110Cite as

Military Logistics Planning in Humanitarian Relief Operations

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Part of the book series: Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces Series ((ORCS,volume 54))

Abstract

Humanitarian logistics is defined as the process of planning, implementing and controlling the efficient, cost effective flow and storage of goods and materials as well as related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption for the purpose of alleviating the suffering of vulnerable people. The function encompasses a range of activities, including preparedness, planning, procurement, transport, warehousing, tracking and tracing. However, several factors may obstruct the flows of reliefs and information in humanitarian relief operations and negatively affect the effectiveness of the involved organizations. Problems such as scarcity of reliefs and logistics means to efficiently distribute the goods, location/allocation of distribution centres and storage capacity, flow bottlenecks in the humanitarian relief network, security of convoys, fairness in reliefs’ distribution, etc. may appear at different stages of the HROs and prevent the reliefs from reaching the needy populations. This chapter considers HROs from a military logistics perspective. We review some challenging problems in HROs. We then propose mathematical planning and optimization models to address some of these problems. Finally, we give some concluding remarks and some future research venues.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The increase in the number of disasters is explained partly by better reporting of disasters in general and partly due to real increases in both the frequency and the impact of certain types of disasters.

  2. 2.

    Non-deterministic polynomial-time hard. The optimization problem, "what is the optimal solution of the loading and routing problem in our tactical logistics problem?”, is NP-hard, since there is no easy way (polynomial-time algorithm) to determine if a solution is the optimal one.

  3. 3.

    Is the difference between the LP and ILP solution values.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of National Defence, Defence R&D Canada, Centre for Operational Research & Analysis (DRDC-CORA), Ottawa, ON, K1A 0K2, Canada

    Samir Sebbah, Abdeslem Boukhtouta & Ahmed Ghanmi

  2. Department of National Defence, Defence R&D Canada, Valcartier (DRDC-Valcartier), Quebec, QC, G3J 1X5, Canada

    Jean Berger

Authors
  1. Samir Sebbah
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  2. Abdeslem Boukhtouta
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  3. Jean Berger
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  4. Ahmed Ghanmi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Samir Sebbah .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of FME, University of the Aegean, Chios, 82100, Greece

    Vasileios Zeimpekis

  2. , College of Business, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, N/A, Daytona Beach, 32114, Florida, USA

    Soumia Ichoua

  3. , Department of FME, University of the Aegean, Chios, 82100, Greece

    Ioannis Minis

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Sebbah, S., Boukhtouta, A., Berger, J., Ghanmi, A. (2013). Military Logistics Planning in Humanitarian Relief Operations. In: Zeimpekis, V., Ichoua, S., Minis, I. (eds) Humanitarian and Relief Logistics. Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces Series, vol 54. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7007-6_5

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