Importance of fairness in humanitarian relief distribution

Abstract

This article is inspired by some of the challenges faced by non-governmental organizations in the distribution of humanitarian relief to vulnerable rural communities. A major concern of these organizations is to warrant that relief is distributed in an impartial and transparent way, which gives rise to the notion of fairness. This article thus discusses the importance of fairness in relief distribution and how it can be defined, especially in a context where delivery of vital items must be ensured periodically. We also propose some performance indicators to measure fairness, which can be useful to organizations that are held accountable for the impartiality of their decisions. Finally, an empirical study of an academic case, inspired by a rural aid distribution problem, is used to analyse how different mathematical formulations may contribute in helping crisis managers integrate fairness or equity in their decisions.

Keywords:

• Relief distribution
• fairness
• emergency logistics
• network design problem

Notes

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully recognize Rodrigo Galindo, Programme manager for Oxfam-México, for our helpful discussions and valuable insights for this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 http://sumadosparaprevenir.org/alianza/

2 The Sphere Handbook Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response, Sphere Project, 2011. http://www.spherehandbook.org/ and http://www.sphereproject.org/resources/download-publications/?search=1andkeywords=andlanguage=Englishandcategory=22 to download

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially supported by [Grants OPG 0293307 and RGPIN-2018-03712] from the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

Notes on contributors

Ana María Anaya-Arenas

Ana María Anaya-Arenas, Ph.D., Industrial engineer with a Ph.D. in administration science. Ana María is mainly concerned about the planning, design and optimization of the logistic network and distribution decisions in two particular contexts: humanitarian distribution and healthcare logistics. Her latest work focuses on fairness in distribution as well as on efficient modelling approaches for the biomedical sample transportation problem. Ana María is a Professor at the Business School of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) where she teaches OM courses. She has been invited to share her work at different Universities in France, Colombia and Brazil, where new research groups in humanitarian logistics are being formed. She also works actively in a research team that consults with the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Services of Quebec for several healthcare logistic problems.

Angel Ruiz

Angel Ruiz, Ph.D, is a professor at Université Laval in Canada. He earned his doctoral degree in control systems at the University of Technology of Compiegne, France. He is member of the Interuniversity Research Center on Entreprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation (CIRRELT) and of the FOR@C research consortium. His main research interests are operations research applied to healthcare systems and emergency logistics management. He has published more than 40 scientific articles in international journals related to these disciplines, and he regularly presents his research works in focused international conferences, such as ORAHS or HCSE.

Jacques Renaud

Jacques Renaud, Ph.D., is a professor of logistics at Université Laval. He is responsible for teaching courses related to logistics, distribution as well as transportation management. His main research interests lie in the field of distribution management, including vehicle routing and warehousing. He supervised more than sixty graduate students, and ten students are currently completing their studies under his supervision.