Abstract

Events such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 have highlighted the need to understand network disruptions, in particular in the humani- tarian supply chain. Humanitarian supply logistics cannot be improvised at the time of the emergency since little can be done after a disruption occurs. Therefore, special attention should be given to preparedness efforts and the design of the supply chain network. Inventory preposi- tioning is one of the strategies in the preparedness stage that enhances postdisaster response because it reduces the lead time needed to reach the affected destinations once a disaster has occurred. In this paper, the prepositioning of supplies for disasters is modeled as a facility location problem that accounts for the routing of vehicles and possible disrup- tions in the transportation network. The approach uses a combination of the most reliable path and an integer programming model to find the optimal location of supplies. The problem is solved on an example trans- portation network. The problem exploits a variant of the shortest-path problem and can be solved efficiently even for medium and large-scale transportation networks.