Models for Relief Routing: Equity, Efficiency and Efficacy

By Michael Huang, Karen R. Smilowitz, Burcu Balcik. 2011

362 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In humanitarian relief operations, vehicle routing and supply allocation decisions are critically important. Similar routing and allocation decisions are studied for commercial settings where efficiency, in terms of minimizing cost, is the primary objective. Humanitarian relief is complicated by the presence of multiple objectives beyond minimizing cost. Routing and allocation decisions should result in quick and sufficient distribution of relief supplies, with a focus on equitable service to all aid recipients. However, quantifying such goals can be challenging. In this paper, we define and formulate performance metrics in relief distribution. We focus on efficacy (i.e., the extent to which the goals of quick and sufficient distribution are met) and equity (i.e., the extent to which all recipients receive comparable service). We explore how efficiency, efficacy, and equity influence the structure of vehicle routes and the distribution of resources. We identify trends and routing principles for humanitarian relief based on the analytical properties of the resulting problems and a series of computational tests.

Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Transportation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/de826e961805dfb14332ff59d828f6c8f6855d5d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

1. Thibaut Vidal
2. Mustafa Alp Ertem
3. Piotr Matl
4. Gilbert Laporte
5. Linet Özdamar
6. Xin Hong
7. Nilay Noyan
8. Miguel A. P. M. Lejeune

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

1. Mustafa Alp Ertem
2. Xin Hong
3. Miguel A. P. M. Lejeune
4. Gilbert Laporte
5. Linet Özdamar
6. Nilay Noyan

In Transportation

1. Gilbert Laporte
2. Linet Özdamar

Citations in the corpus

• A concise guide to existing and emerging vehicle routing problem variants (2019, background): “The components of a cumulative objective can also be weighted in order to further bias the route structure toward a customer-centered perspective (Huang et al. 2012).”
• Stochastic network design for disaster preparedness (2015, background): “Alternatively, Rawls and Turnquist (2011) extend their earlier model (Rawls and Turnquist, 2010) by introducing a lower bound on the probability that the network demand is satisfied and the resulting average total shipment distance is less than a specified threshold.”
• Models, solutions and enabling technologies in humanitarian logistics (2015, background): “Huang et al. (2013) integrated visualization of real time crowdsourcing data on OpenStreetMap with SMS messages for demand estimation.”