Inventory policies for humanitarian aid during hurricanes

Laura Consuelos Salas, Manuel Robles Cárdenas and Muhong Zhang

Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 2012, vol. 46, issue 4, 272-280

Abstract: In this work we present a stochastic programming model minimizing costs, to support the decision process of inventory policy which best satisfies the demand for food in shelters when hurricane winds are about to impact a town. In this model we consider perishable products as well as the first in first out (FIFO) system for their consumption. In order to make the model closer to reality ordering cost is time-varying and we add a penalty cost in case the shortage exceeds a known limit for two days in a row. Finally the cost to dispose of expired food is greater than the purchase cost of the product since throwing away food has ethical implications. Starting from a stochastic programming model, we present a procedure to transform it to a deterministic mixed integer programming model (MIP) with non-convex objective function over its entire domain, which closely states the situation in reality. Preliminary computational results and discussion are presented.

Keywords: Inventory policies; Emergency management; Hurricane; Mixed integer programming model; Perishable products inventory; Stochastic programming model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceps:v:46:y:2012:i:4:p:272-280

DOI: 10.1016/j.seps.2012.02.002

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