Modelling the inter-relationship between factors affecting coordination in a humanitarian supply chain: a case of Chennai flood relief

Lijo John (), Anand Gurumurthy (), Gunjan Soni () and Vipul Jain ()
Additional contact information
Lijo John: Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIMK)
Anand Gurumurthy: Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIMK)
Gunjan Soni: Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur
Vipul Jain: Victoria University of Wellington

Annals of Operations Research, 2019, vol. 283, issue 1, No 49, 1227-1258

Abstract: Abstract The humanitarian supply chain (HSC) aims at providing relief to affected people in the wake of a disaster at the right place and at the right time to reduce their suffering. One of the major challenges faced by the HSC is the coordination between various actors. Previous studies have identified the factors affecting coordination but the literature is silent on the inter-dependence between these factors (criteria). In this study, we identify the factors affecting coordination based on the review of extant literature in HSC and interviews with multiple individuals representing various stakeholders involved with the relief activities carried out during the Chennai floods. These factors were grouped into four categories: information sharing, diversity (of the humanitarian agencies), organizational mandates and material convergence. We use a hybrid fuzzy DEMATEL-ANP methodology to identify the interdependence and develop the network relationship diagram by mapping the interdependence between the factors affecting the effective coordination between the actors in HSC. Our results indicate that information exchange between the humanitarian actors (HA) tantamount to achieve coordination in post disaster response phase. However, with the improvement in the post–disaster coordination, the HAs need to focus on pre-disaster preparedness phase through strong alignment of organizational mandates of HAs and focus on the diverse nature of HAs to align their operational strategies through standardized operations, inter-operability of activities and building trust through long term associations.

Keywords: Disaster management; Humanitarian supply chain; Fuzzy; DEMATEL; ANP; Coordination; Floods; Chennai (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10479-018-2963-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:annopr:v:283:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s10479-018-2963-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10479

DOI: 10.1007/s10479-018-2963-3

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Operations Research is currently edited by Endre Boros

More articles in Annals of Operations Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().