A coordinated approach to the facility location problem in disaster relief management

Details

Supervisors

Agrell, Per Joakim

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

When disaster strikes, the affected population needs food, water, shelter and sanitary and medical supplies and the government often requires the assistance of humanitarian organizations. One of the first decisions the government must make is where to locate the humanitarian aid facilities. Meanwhile, they must balance the different objectives of the organizations involved: location preferences and donor accountability requirements. A coordinated approach among the humanitarian organizations is necessary to avoid wasted response time and resources, while reaching as many people as possible. However, current research on facility location problems in a disaster context focuses on optimizing the global network without incorporating these individual objectives. This study aims to propose a planning tool for the placement of facilities from organizations with different objectives in disaster relief management. First, the facility location problem is examined for organizations that optimize their operations independently. Then, a multicriteria optimization model is used to identify opportunities for coordination. A comparison of both approaches shows that the uncoordinated approach may be suboptimal compared to the coordinated one. The model also helps to determine how an organization can be incentivized to coordinate if needed. An illustrative example evaluates the applicability of the model in the event of an earthquake. This allows to formulate recommendations to optimally use the budget raised after a donation campaign and to increase the total number of people that receive aid from the facilities.