A Model for Humanitarian

Supply Chain: An Operation

Research Approach
Ma.Teodora E. Gutierrez a ,
Jose Edgar S.Mutuc b
Effects of Disaster
Current Issue: Lack of storage facilities
for relief goods
 The use of temporary storage for emergency relief items is proven to improve
the responsiveness, efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian supply chain
 Providing decision support systems for humanitarian logistics managers is
important
The operation research technique with center of
gravity approach was not yet applied in the
disaster logistics. Looking at the previous
studies, it requires high skills to execute the
solutions but the paper’s proposed approached
in disaster logistics is easy to use and requires
simple tasks to implement.
This study was taken to know the best location of drop
off points of relief items that will increase
responsiveness and decrease logistics cost.
Method

 Operations research is the scientific study of operations for the purpose of

better decision making and management

 The paper used Operation Research technique to identify an optimum solution

by calculating the total transportation cost of the location of the new facility.
It seeks to minimize transportation cost which is the sum of the product of
customer’s volume of demand (vi) multiplied by the transportation rate to
customer’s location i (ri) and multiplied by the distances of each customer
location i from the facility location(di) as seen in equation (1).
The paper seeks first to compute for the
geographic coordinates of the location of the
new facilities within the network of
customers’ locations using Center of Gravity
Method. The center of gravity methods in
facilities location analysis is a quantitative
model that seeks to compute for the
geographic coordinates for a new facilities
that will have minimum cost.
The main variables in the study are
the customer’s location, volume of
goods shipped and the shipping or
transportation rates. The facility to be
located is determined by the solution
process of the center of gravity
method
Results
 The objective is to seek for the optimum
location of a temporary facility of relief
operation center in order to deliver the
total demands of relief items to the
affected families within 72 hours after
disaster strikes. Figure 2 shows the
different locations of the evacuation
centers in Marikina City as shown by the
blue circles. The bigger circle reflects
larger volume of demand in that particular
evacuation centers.
 Table 1. Summary of Solution Algorithm

Iteration X coordinate Y coordinate Total Cost

0 540.6238 1544.823 2,231,822.47

1 484.41 1,560.97 2,227,890.6
2 472.42 1,562.01 2,227,704.92
3 469.86 1,560.31 3,036,470.34
4 884.75 2,285.86 2,416,711.63
5 723.99 1,876.29 1,693,497.80
6 647.61 1,545.32 2,245,423.75
7 523.39 1,567.17 2,229,924.73
8 482.47 1,571.07 2,227,856.62
9 474.07 1,569.33 2,227,750.91
10 471.78 1,566.29 2,227,723.20
11 470.61 1,563.46 2,227,704.73
12 469.75 1,561.05 2,227,691.72
13 469.05 1,559.01 2,227,682.57
14 468.47 1,557.31 2,227,676.13
15 467.99 1,555.88 2,227,671.60
To validate the effectiveness of the computed
geographical location, we use equation (1) to
compute for the total transportation cost of
existing facility which is in City Municipal Hall and
the computed optimum location of facility.
Marikina High School is a 2 km away from the
existing relief center facility which is in the City
Municipal Hall.
 With the use of the proposed approach, it is possible to determine the
minimum time and cost to locate the optimum site for a temporary relief
center operations facility, which will immediately provide for the needs of the
disasters victims

 The costs are functions of distances of evacuation centers, volume of demand

needed for each evacuation centers and the shipping cost
Applying Center of Gravity method resulted in finding
the optimum location of a single facility as it reflects
minimum cost which was shown in the study and as
compared to any different locations in geographic
area being studied. Positioning the facilities in the
optimum location will result to a significant saving of
40% of the total transportation cost.
 It also validate that the location of facilities affects the movement of the
relief goods. The better positioned of the facilities, the quicker the
movement of relief goods which will meet the standards of 72 hours of
response time for delivery of relief goods and the lower the transportation
cost as well.

 Quicker response to the needs of disaster victims could mean helping to build
resilience in to their daily lives.By determining the optimum facility locations,
it will help the policy makers and the emergency managers on planning the
operations of the relief centers.