HUMANITARIAN LOGISTICS DEPOT LOCATION MODEL

Lack, of coordination and collaboration among participants of humanitarian relief chains, high costs in the area of Humanitarian Logistics and long transit times of goods build this research paper on the idea that the response depot location should be improved to reach the required delivery time of 24/48 hours by producing lower transport and logistics cost in case of a disaster in the world. With this in mind this research article describes the humanitarian relief chain, the depot locations of two global players such as International Federation of the Red Cross and the UN World Food Program in a disaster relief. Furthermore the typical location problem in logistics will be solved especially for one single global depot location in Humanitarian Logistics by developing and using a mathematical location planning model. Finally to outline the research strategic locations of depots for more effective humanitarian supply chains will be compared. The focus is to develop a mathematical model,based on the fact that there are not many. mathematical solution programs for strategic and tactical decisions in the area of Humanitarian Logistics. According to a literature review in the period of 2005 till 2010 in scientific and academic publications in journals and conferences proceedings only 7 publications focused on research methodology such as mathematic models in Humanitarian Logistics. As an introduction the instantaneous situation of the humanitarian operation relief chain is shown. In the second chapter the problem description is given before a location model is introduced. In the fourth chapter a solution is calculated and compared with exciting response depot locations in the fifth chapter. It ends with a conclusion and an outlook. The aim of the paper at hand is to discuss the strategically and tactical decision of locations of response depots in the area of Humanitarian Logistics in case of an efficient and effective structuring of humanitarian relief operations.