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Multi-criteria logistics modeling for military humanitarian assistance and disaster relief aerial delivery operations

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Abstract

Given that it is not always feasible to reach an affected area via land or sea within the first week following a natural disaster, aerial delivery provides the primary means to rapidly supply the affected population. Further, it is often the case that high density delivery of humanitarian aid supplies are taken over by non-friendly groups within the affected population. By using direct airdrop systems to deliver large quantities of individually wrapped food and water items, dispersion among the affected disaster relief population will occur more quickly. In this paper, we proffer a multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) framework to optimize the military humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HA/DR) aerial delivery supply chain network. The model uses stochastic, mixed-integer, weighted goal programming to optimize network design, logistics costs, staging locations, procurement amounts, and inventory levels. The MCDA framework enables decision-makers to explore the trade-offs between military HA/DR aerial delivery supply chain efficiency and responsiveness, while optimizing across a wide range of real-world, probabilistic scenarios to account for the inherent uncertainty in the location of global humanitarian disasters as well as the amount of demand to be met.

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Acknowledgments

This work is partially supported by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center. The first author was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DGE1255832. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Army, National Science Foundation, Pennsylvania State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, or Texas Tech University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, 355 Leonhard Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Nathaniel D. Bastian

  2. School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 755 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA

    Paul M. Griffin

  3. Vehicle Applied Research Division, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, 4603 Flare Loop, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Aberdeen, MD, 21005, USA

    Eric Spero

  4. Rawls College of Business Administration, Texas Tech University, 703 Flint Ave, Lubbock, TX, 79410, USA

    Lawrence V. Fulton

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  1. Nathaniel D. Bastian
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  2. Paul M. Griffin
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Correspondence to Nathaniel D. Bastian.

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Bastian, N.D., Griffin, P.M., Spero, E. et al. Multi-criteria logistics modeling for military humanitarian assistance and disaster relief aerial delivery operations. Optim Lett 10, 921–953 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11590-015-0888-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11590-015-0888-1

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