A scenario-based possibilistic-stochastic programming approach to address resilient humanitarian logistics considering travel time and resilience levels of facilities

Abstract

There is a great deal of interest in addressing humanitarian logistics due to the need for emergency services in the case of disaster. Controlling both operational and disruption uncertainties in the emergency management is one of challenging topics lately to propose a robust plan for humanitarian logistics. Designing a robust and resilient humanitarian relief chain networks under both operational and disruptive risks can ensure the delivery of the essential supplies to beneficiaries. In this paper, a humanitarian logistic network design with multiple central warehouses and local distribution centres in an integrated manner is addressed by a novel scenario-based possibilistic-stochastic programming approach. The main real-life application of the proposed methodology is to consider the transportation network's routes after an earthquake to provide a plan against uncertainty in whole levels of supply chain along with its availability. To this end, a real case study of Mazandaran province in the north of Iran is provided to validate our methodology as well as a comprehensive discussion and managerial insights are concluded from the results.

KEYWORDS:

• Stochastic programming
• supply chain
• humanitarian logistics
• relief chain
• resiliency
• multiple disasters

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank especially Professor Seyedali Mirjalili, associate professor at Torrens University Australia. He is a native English editor in high-ranked journals such as Applied Soft Computing, Applied Intelligence and Advances in Engineering Software. He helped us to correct the English writing and his insightful suggestions and comments are very useful to improve this paper. We also wish to thank the co-editor in-chief, Professor Konstantaras, and anonymous reviewers for their constructive and very useful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ali Mehdi Nezhadroshan

Ali Mehdi Nezhadroshan is a master student at department of management in Islamic Aazad University (IAU). He earned his B.Sc. in biomedical engineering from IAU (2017). He is interested in business management, healthcare systems, supply chain and logistics along with mathematical model and optimization algorithms.

Amir Mohammad Fathollahi-Fard

Amir Mohammad Fathollahi-Fardwas born and raised in Sari, Iran. Amir is currently a research associate at École de Technologie Supérieure, University of Québec, Montréal, Canada. He earn his PhD in Industrial Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Poly-technique), Tehran, Iran (2021). He also received his BSc (2016) and MSc (2018) degrees in Industrial Engineering from University of Science and Technology of Mazandaran, Behshahr, Iran. His researches are about Supply Chain Management, Sustainable Operations Management, Transportation and Logistics Optimisation and Health Care Management. He evaluated these concepts with the use of Operations Research, Optimisation algorithms mainly by using Heuristics and Multi-Criterion Decision-Making methods. He has published more than 50 papers in the above areas in high-ranked journals e.g. JCLP, ASOC, CAIE, NCAA, EAAI, INS etc.

Mostafa Hajiaghaei-Keshteli

Mostafa Hajiaghaei-Keshteliwas born and raised in Babol, Iran. He earned his BSc from Iran University of Science & Technology, Tehran, Iran (2004); MSc from University of Science & Culture, Tehran, Iran (2006); and PhD from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran-Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran (2012); all in Industrial Engineering. He is currently an associate professor in Industrial Engineering at University of Science & Technology of Mazandaran, Behshar, Iran. He has over 15 years of experience in Business Development, System Analysis, Inventory and Project Management. Mostafa also has worked for many corporations in Iran and has held the positions of consulter, planning and project manager and VP. The main focus of his research is in the area of Inventory Control, Supply Chain Network, Transportation and Meta-heuristics. He has published more than 100 scientific papers in high-ranked journals such as ESWA, CAIE, KNOSYS, JCLP, INS, NCAA, IEEE, ASOC etc.