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The number of care‐dependent people will rise in future. Therefore, it is important to support home health care (HHC) providers with suitable methods and information, especially in times of disasters. The purpose of this paper is to reveal potential threats that influence HHC and propose an option to incorporate these threats into the planning and scheduling of HHC services.

This paper reveals the different conditions and potential threats for HHC in rural and urban areas. Additionally, the authors made a disaster vulnerability analysis, based on literature research and the experience of the Austrian Red Cross (ARC), one of the leading HHC providers in Austria. An optimization approach is applied for rural HHC that also improves the satisfaction levels of clients and nurses. A numerical study with real life data shows the impacts of different flood scenarios.

It can be concluded that HHC service providers will be faced with two challenges in the future: an increased organizational effort and the need for an anticipatory risk management. Hence, the development and use of powerful decision support systems are necessary.

For an application in urban regions new methods have to be developed due to the use of different modes of transport by the nurses. Additionally, an extension of the planning horizon and triage rules will be part of future research.

The presented information on developments and potential threats for HHC are very useful for service providers. The introduced software prototype has proven to be a good choice to optimize and secure HHC; it is going to be tested in the daily business of the ARC.

Even in the case of disasters, HHC services must be sustained to avoid health implications. This paper makes a contribution to securing HHC, also with respect to future demographic trends.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge there are no comprehensive studies that focus on disaster management in the field of HHC. Additionally, the combination with optimization techniques provides useful insights for decision makers in that area.

In recent years, logistics service providers (LSPs) have become important players in the humanitarian field, providing support for NGOs and governments when they respond to major disasters. However, the academic literature on humanitarian logistics has not really explored the roles that LSPs play in relief supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of LSPs in humanitarian relief.

The research uses a two-stage exploratory approach: first, it systematically reviews the humanitarian logistics literature to see the extent to which LSPs are taken into account. Then it analyses the web sites of leading LSPs to examine how they communicate about their role in humanitarian relief.

This research produces some surprising findings. While the academic literature seems to neglect the roles of LSPs in humanitarian logistics, some major third-party firms highlight their roles in relief networks. A number of research propositions are presented describing emerging roles for LSPs in relief supply chains.

This paper focuses on academic humanitarian logistics literature; a review of practitioner articles and the LSP literature might also be relevant. The web site analysis is based on corporate communication which may contain bias. Further research should add to this work with NGO/government perspectives and produce primary data in order to demonstrate the external validity of the research propositions.

The research identifies different roles LSPs could play in humanitarian supply chains, suggesting opportunities for new business lines.

The main contributions of this paper are to explore the roles LSPs could play in humanitarian logistics and to bring a new perspective to humanitarian logistics research.