Humanitarian Logistics Management

Lecture 1：Background & Introduction

Humanitarian Logistics: The process of planning, implementing, and controlling the efficient,
cost-effective flow of and storage of goods and materials as well as related information, from
point of origin to point of consumption for the purpose of meeting the end beneficiary’s
requirements.

For humanitarians, logistics consists of the processes and systems involved in mobilizing people,
resources, skills, and knowledge to help vulnerable people affected by disaster.
Humanitarian Sector Funding Flows

What is a Disaster?
 An event that fits at least one of the following criteria:
1. 10 or more people killed.
2. 100 or more people affected.
3. results in a declaration of a state of emergency.
4. results in calls for international assistance.
 Catastrophe disaster is an event that:
o Results in large numbers of deaths and injuries;
o Causes extensive damage or destruction of facilities that provide and sustain human
needs; produces an overwhelming demand on state and local response resources
and mechanisms;
o causes a severe long-term effect on general economic activity;
o and severely affects state, local, and private-sector capabilities to begin and sustain
response activities.
 A catastrophic effect on human lives and a region’s or even a nation’s resources.
Classification of Disasters

Natural Man-made
Sudden-onset Earthquake Terrorist Attack
Hurricane Chemical leak
Tornadoes
Slow-onset Famine Refugee Crisis
Drought Political Crisis
Poverty

Disaster Responses

Disaster response may be at the local/regional, national, or international levels.

Typically, the immediate response to disasters comes from local systems.

These systems are comprised of governmental agencies NGOs (non-governmental agencies)

with local representation, National Societies of Red Cross and Red Crescent with local branches,
the army, fire and police departments, and other civil agencies.

When the local response system is overwhelmed by the size of the disaster, the national system
is activated. If the national system does not have the capability/capacity to respond and the
affected country approves it, the international system is activated.
Lecture 2: Commercial vs Humanitarian Supply
The Disaster Management Cycle Phases

Disaster management can be depicted as a cycle with several phases:

• Pre-disaster phase: mitigation and preparedness

o Assessment:
o Identify risk factors.
o Assess vulnerabilities.
o Planning:
o Evaluate infrastructure.
o Pre-position resources.
o Conduct capacity building.
o Engage policy makers.
o Training and Education:
o Make sure that those who need to know.

• Disaster phase: response

o Relief Operations:
o First Phase: medicines, water, food, shelter
o Second Phase: housing, restoring food supply chains, construction
o Stages of Logistics Operations:
o Mobilization and procurement
o Long haul
o The last mile

• Post-disaster phase: recovery

o Reconstruction:
o Cleaning up of debris
o Rebuilding of infrastructure
o Re-establishing communities
o Evaluation:
o Measuring the effects of disaster on:
o Planning, response, and infrastructure
o Identifying lessons learned:
o Providing feedback to planning and response authorities
Local Government Responsibilities

Identifying hazards and assessing their potential risk to the community.

• Determining the community’s capability to mitigate against, prepare for, respond to, and
recover from major emergencies.

• Identifying and employing methods to improve the community’s emergency management

capability through efficient use of resources, improved coordination, and cooperation with
other communities and with the State and Federal governments.

• Establishing mitigation measures such as building codes, zoning ordinances, or land-use

management programs.

• Developing and coordinating preparedness plans.

• Establishing warning systems.

• Stocking emergency supplies and equipment.

• Educating the public and training emergency personnel.

• Assessing damage caused by the emergency.

• Activating response plans and rescue operations.

• Ensuring that shelter and medical assistance are provided.

• Recovering from the emergency and helping citizens return to normal life as soon as possible.
Humanitarian Logistics Specific Challenges Today

Specific Challenges:

o Climate change
o Urbanization trends – now more than half of the world’s population lives in cities
o Diseases are spreading at increasing speeds because of global air travel and increased
population densities

Effects on Disasters

o Increasing severity
o Increasing frequency – It is estimated that over the next 50 years natural and man-made
disasters will increase five-fold
o Complexity
Lecture 3: Supply Chain Risk Management

Supply Chain Risk Management –

 Environmental Risk Sources: consist of any uncertainties arising from the supply chain
and environmental interactions.
• These may be the result of accidents (such as fires, explosions, etc.), man-made
(terrorist attacks), or natural disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, and other
extreme weather events).
 Network-related risk sources arise from interactions between the organizations involved
in the supply chain.
• Lack of Ownership
 Lack of ownership risk sources is due from the blurring of boundaries
between buying and supplying companies in the chain. With outsourcing,
there may be confused lines of responsibility.
• Chaos
 There may be chaos effects in a supply chain due to mistrust,
overreaction, and distorted information.
• Inertia
 Such risks are due to a lack of responsiveness to changing environmental
conditions and market signals. Flexibility may be sacrificed, especially in
global supply chains, where they may be an emphasis on cost reduction.
 Organizational risk sources lie within the scope of the boundaries of the supply chain
parties and include labour issues such as strikes, production uncertainties (quality and
machine failures) to IT-based uncertainties.
Supply Chain Risk Management – Drivers of Risk
Mitigation Strategies

 Avoidance dropping specific products / geographical markets, etc.

 Control through vertical integration, increased stockpiling, maintaining excess capacity
in production, storage, etc., and composing contractual obligations on suppliers.
 Cooperation through joint efforts to improve SC visibility, the sharing of risk-related
information, and preparation of SC continuity plans.
 Flexibility through postponement, multiple sourcing, localized sourcing

Stress Testing the Supply Chain

 Companies can explore their risk through the investigation of various possible scenarios
to stress test the supply chains.
 They can then prioritize and work on mitigating the risks.
Tailored Strategies
Supply Chain Risk Management – Humanitarian Relief Operations

Humanitarian Crises or Disasters

 It is imperative to remember that humanity, independence, neutrality and impartiality

are at the heart of humanitarian action. They are crucial to ensuring that humanitarian
action is effective, and that it reaches those most in need.
Lecture 4: Fundamental Issues in Humanitarian Logistics

 Lack of correct need and damage assessment.

 Assessing the damage caused by any disaster is the primary step in planning any
of the humanitarian activity. The match between the demand for the relief items
and the supply has to be achieved.
 Lack of predictable demand patterns. (different impact, may huge or low)
 Since there is no referable time series data, which can be used for the prediction,
the demand estimation becomes a difficult task.
 Solution: learn from previous disaster, engage with local authorities
 Shortage of experienced logisticians
 There are very few people working the area of humanitarian logistics who have
adequate experience in handling the critical situations. The logisticians working
in the humanitarian field are required to have well-developed functional skills
 Solution: Provide proper training to the employees. Engage the education sector,
provide information about logistics to the upcoming generation.
 Lack of Bilateral Information Sharing
 The ease of access information is not just limited to the proximity of the
distribution center and the crisis-affected zone but also to the political
relationship between the countries. This leads to the low effective flow of
information and relief material to the crisis-affected area.
 Lack of infrastructure facilities. (building, shelter, airport, warehouse, call line,,,)
 The transportation facilities in the wake of the disaster include the ease of
transportation to and from the site of disaster, via various modes of
transportation. The high uncertainty in the time lead to the disruption of the
transportation facilities which leads even to the loss of live.
 Solution: Create markets for infrastructure projects and services, enhance the
attractiveness of infrastructure projects for private funding, to collaborate with
private sector, investment. Response: find alternative transport quickly
 Lack of a central authority.
 Lack of experience
 Solution: Hand out the priority to the autonomous bodies, come out with
authority. SOP and regulation
 Lack of knowledge about scale of devastation.
 Estimating the actual number of people affected by the disaster is a very difficult
task, and this acts as a challenge in the planning of the relief programs.
 Unpredictable Occurrence (hard to prepare manpower)
 The unpredictability in the nature, the time, the intensity, and the location of the
disaster is unknown prior to the occurrence.
 Solution: Continuous simulation approaches. Pre-positioning inventory,
mechanisms for medical items and essential goods
 Improper Identification of Supply Sources
 Bad decision on choosing supplier
 Inconsistent in quality and quantity
  Solution: Having and sharing authentic information. Implementing the right
production method according to international standard
 Lack of Proper Management of Aid Materials (Insufficient Meterials)
 Aid to the places and times where are needed.
 Resources face scarcity, relief organization compete for the resources
 Resources might be abundant in relief chain. Cause unsolicited donations
which are of no use to the beneficiaries
 Solution: have a proper coordination, command, communication, and
information. Create a system in manage aid material. Appropriate policies.
 Inadequate Procurement of Aid Materials (Buy the wrong things, not fulfil the
requirement) (no knowledge about the customer need)
 Aid material procurement is another barrier in the area of the humanitarian aid
activity. For example, there are a lot of regulations in the food procurement.
Every country has its own policies and procedures for the food procurement, and
during a crisis situation, this acts as a barrier since a lot of procedures have to be
followed and each of which might be time consuming.
 Improper Funding
 The time taken for the request of the funds to be transferred to the
governmental and the non-governmental organizations and the time taken for
the release of these funds affect the stakeholder in the HSCM.
 Lack of Coordination Between Different Actors