Disaster Response Planning in the Private Sector and the Role of Operations Research

Özlem Ergun, Gonca Karakus, Paul Kerl, Pinar Keskinocak, Julie L. Swann, Monica Villarreal () and Matthew J. Drake
Additional contact information
Özlem Ergun: Georgia Institute of Technology
Gonca Karakus: Georgia Institute of Technology
Paul Kerl: Georgia Institute of Technology
Pinar Keskinocak: Georgia Institute of Technology
Julie L. Swann: Georgia Institute of Technology
Monica Villarreal: Georgia Institute of Technology
Matthew J. Drake: Duquesne University

Chapter Chapter 9 in Handbook of Operations Research for Homeland Security, 2013, pp 197-217 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Organizations in the private sector such as The Home Depot (THD), Lowe’s, Wal-Mart, and Waffle House have become actively involved in the disaster response operations in their communities. With the objective of becoming effective first responders, these companies have integrated a disaster response planning process to their business operations. We introduce the disaster response planning process implemented by THD after their experience with Hurricane Andrew. We describe in detail the components of this process, each of which requires different decisions to be made at different levels of the organization. We discuss how operations research methodologies could be used to assist decision makers in the disaster response setting, and we propose an optimization model for each of two of the decisions commonly found in a disaster response planning process: advance purchasing and inventory allocation. In addition to these exact methods, we suggest a scenario-based approach, which is more intuitive and allows to incorporate objectives that are harder to model, such as the relative value of the supplies.

Keywords: Functional Area; Disaster Response; Federal Emergency Management Agency; Command Center; Item Group (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:isochp:978-1-4614-5278-2_9

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9781461452782

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-5278-2_9

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in International Series in Operations Research & Management Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().