Cooperative maximal covering models for humanitarian relief chain management

• Published in: Computers & industrial engineering Vol. 119; pp. 301 - 308
• Main Authors: Li, Xueping, Ramshani, Mohammad, Huang, Yu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.05.2018
• Subjects: Cooperative maximal covering models; Humanitarian relief chain management; Relief chain structure; Relief chain structure; Cooperative maximal covering models; Humanitarian relief chain management
• ISSN: 0360-8352; 1879-0550
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cie.2018.04.004

•We investigated the humanitarian relief chain problem under demand uncertainty.•We developed a cooperative maximal covering model to maximize appeal coverage.•We conducted sensitivity analysis and robust analysis.•We evaluated the effectiveness of the proposed cooperative models. Observing the growing risks of disasters and challenges in humanitarian relief chain management, this study examines the general structure in humanitarian relief chain logistics, and focuses on developing a maximal cooperative covering model with budget considerations to maximize the benefits to the affected population in disastrous regions. Disasters affect regions depending on their severity, and the demand of the disastrous regions cannot be exactly predicted. We incorporate demand uncertainty to capture the uncertain nature of disasters. We include financial efficiency and appeal coverage as two key performance indicators to evaluate humanitarian relief chain management, and preform extensive sensitivity and robustness analysis. We analyze the impact of availability of items through distribution centers on relief chain management, and compare the performance of the proposed model under cooperative and non-cooperative scenarios.