Development of a general multi-objective framework for OM in Humanitarian Logistics

According to Tomasini and Van Wassenhove (2004) the most important humanitarian operations goal can be defined as the mitigation of the needs of the people hit by a disaster as a combination of many different features, such as the shortest amount of time, the least amount of resources, the highest service level, under a sustainable approach. Even if it is a quite new research field many scientific contributions have been developed about the operations management in the humanitarian logistics. The present work aims to investigate the general multi-objective issue associated to humanitarian operations in disaster lifecycle, seen as four different phases: Preparedness, Immediate Response (Ramp Up), Support (Maturity) and Dismantling (RampDown) (Charles A. 2010). The paper introduces a general multi-objective framework that can be associated to different problems for each phase of the disaster and post-disaster situation. The research includes the typical operations management approaches associated to the humanitarian field, following the different typical goals for the humanitarian environment indicated by B. M. Beamon (2004) and J. Holguín-Veras et al. (2010). The purpose is to give a general guide lines to follow for each different phase in order to solve its typical problems for its own objectives and with its own constrains, with some examples of applications.