A decision support tool for allocating temporary-disaster-response facilities

Abstract

Managing disaster response operations is a challenging task requiring the consideration of many stakeholders under time pressure, risk and uncertainty. Utilization of information technology for decision support might produce great benefits for decision makers to overcome such challenges. This study presents a decision support tool for allocating temporary-disaster-response facilities for relief supplies distribution under demand uncertainty, as one of the many challenging problems in disaster relief operations. The decision support tool developed in this study consists of three main components; database, decision engine and user interface. We also include an example real-life case for illustration and present the results produced by the decision support tool. It is noted that the decision support tool allows decision makers to allocate temporary-disaster-response facilities in many different after-disaster situations by taking into account the possible uncertainties to occur after a disaster by utilizing a two-stage-stochastic programming framework. Although it is illustrated with a specific example case in this paper, the flexibility of the decision support tool allows users to consider other cases with as many scenarios as desired. We think that it might be a useful tool to help decision makers in allocating temporary-disaster-response facilities for relief supplies distribution.