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When a large-scale outbreak such as the COVID-19 pandemic happens, organizations that are responsible for delivering relief may face a lack of both provisions and human resources. Governments are the primary source for the humanitarian supplies required during such a crisis; however, coordination with humanitarian NGOs in handling such pandemics is a vital form of public-private partnership (PPP). Aid organizations have to consider not only the total degree of demand satisfaction in such cases but also the obligation that relief goods such as medicine and foods should be distributed as equitably as possible within the affected areas (AAs).

Given the challenges of acquiring real data associated with procuring relief items during the COVID-19 outbreak, a comprehensive simulation-based plan is used to generate 243 small, medium and large-sized problems with uncertain demand, and these problems are solved to optimality using GAMS. Finally, post-optimality analyses are conducted, and some useful managerial insights are presented.

The results imply that given a reasonable measure of deprivation costs, it can be important for managers to focus less on the logistical costs of delivering resources and more on the value associated with quickly and effectively reducing the overall suffering of the affected individuals. It is also important for managers to recognize that even though deprivation costs and transportation costs are both increasing as the time horizon increases, the actual growth rate of the deprivation costs decreases over time.

In this paper, a novel mathematical model is presented to minimize the total costs of delivering humanitarian aid for pandemic relief. With a focus on sustainability of operations, the model incorporates total transportation and delivery costs, the cost of utilizing the transportation fleet (transportation mode cost), and equity and deprivation costs. Taking social costs such as deprivation and equity costs into account, in addition to other important classic cost terms, enables managers to organize the best possible response when such outbreaks happen.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and to help address the need for quantitative models to support and improve procurement in the context of humanitarian relief efforts.

This research presents a two‐stage stochastic decision model with recourse for procurement in humanitarian relief supply chains, and compares its effectiveness on an illustrative example with respect to a standard solution approach.

Results show the ability of the new model to capture and model both the procurement process and the uncertainty inherent in a disaster relief situation, in support of more efficient and effective procurement plans.

The research focus is on sudden onset disasters and it does not differentiate between local and international suppliers. A number of extensions of the base model could be implemented, however, so as to address the specific needs of a given organization and their procurement process.

Despite the prevalence of procurement expenditures in humanitarian efforts, procurement in humanitarian contexts is a topic that previously has only been discussed in a qualitative manner in the literature. This work provides practitioners with a new approach to quantitatively assess and improve their procurement decision processes.

This study adds to the existing literature by demonstrating the applicability and effectiveness of an analytic modeling technique based on uncertainty, such as stochastic programming with recourse, in the context of humanitarian relief procurement activities.

The idea of implementing supply chain management (SCM) principles for the construction industry was embraced by construction stakeholders to enhance the sector's performance. The analysis from the literature revealed that the implementation of SCM in the construction industry enhances the industry's value in terms of cost-saving, time savings, material management, risk management and others. The construction supply chain (CSC) can be managed using the pull or push system. This chapter also discusses the origin and proliferation of SCM into the construction industry. The chapter revealed that the concept of SCM has passed through five different eras: the creation era, the use of ERP, globalisation stage, specialisation stage and electronic stage. The findings from the literature revealed that we are presently in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) era. At this stage, the SCM witnesses the adoption of technologies and principles driven by the 4IR. This chapter also revealed that the practice of SCM in the construction industry is centred around integration, collaboration, communication and the structure of the supply chain (SC). The forms and challenges hindering the adoption of these practices were also discussed extensively in this chapter.

This study aims to investigate supply network (SN) resilience capabilities across the organizational, supply chain (SC) and industry levels by drawing on the complex adaptive systems (CASs) theory and the social–ecological perspective of resilience. An empirically grounded framework operationalizes the concept of social–ecological resilience by expounding resilience capabilities across phases of the CAS adaptive cycle.

This research uses a qualitative multiple case study approach. It draws on the case of the Australian Defence Manufacturing SN (ADM SN) during COVID-19 disruptions. A total of 28 interviews with senior decision makers from 17 companies, complemented by 5 interviews with the Australian Defence SC organizations and secondary data analysis, support the findings.

Individual organizations’ SC visibility and flexibility enabled by effective risk management and collaboration enhance the ability of the SN to anticipate and prepare for disruption. At the same time, the strength of SC relationships reduces resilience. SN disruption response velocity is enabled by inventory redundancy, process flexibility at the organizational level and visibility and collaboration at the SC level. Institutional support at the national industry level, development of value-adding capabilities and manufacturing process flexibility at the organizational level enhances the SN’s ability to re-organize. The transition from hierarchical to decentralized collaborative governance enhances SN resilience.

From a practitioner’s perspective, the findings highlight the need to embrace a broader view of SC beyond immediate tiers. Decision-makers in multinational companies must recognize the long-term impact of their procurement decisions on the supplier ecosystem. Developing local supplier capabilities rather than relying on established global SCs will pay off with future resilience. It, however, demands substantial investment and radical changes across all SC tiers. The lesson for smaller firms is not to over-rely on the existing relationships with supply partners. Although trust-based relationships and collaboration are essential, over-commitment can be counterproductive during global disruptions. With a lack of visibility and control over the SC, operational flexibility is critical for small firms to adapt to shifts in supply and demand.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this empirical research is one of the first attempts to operationalize the social–ecological perspective of SN resilience. Evidence-based theoretical propositions contribute to the emerging conversation about the CAS nature of resilience by demonstrating the multi-level effects of resilience capabilities.

Every year volunteers play a crucial role in disaster responses around the world. Volunteer management is known to be more complex than managing a paid workforce, and this is only made worse by the uncertainty of rapidly changing conditions of crisis scenarios. The purpose of this paper is to address the critical problem of assigning tasks to volunteers and other renewable and non-renewable resources simultaneously, particularly under high-load conditions. These conditions are described by a significant mismatch between available volunteer resources and demands or by frequent changes in requirements.

Through a combination of literature reviews and interviews with managers from several major volunteer organizations, six key characteristics of crisis volunteer resource allocation problems are identified. These characteristics are then used to develop a general mixed integer programming framework for modeling these problems. Rather than relying on probabilistic resource or demand characterizations, this framework addresses the constantly changing conditions inherent to this class of problems through a dynamic resource reallocation-based approach that minimizes the undesirable impacts of changes while meeting the desired and changing objectives. The viability of this approach for solving problems of realistic size and scale is demonstrated through a large set of computational experiments.

Using a common commercial solver, optimal solutions to the allocation and reallocation problems were consistently obtained in short timespans for a wide variety of problems that have realistic sizes and characteristics.

The proposed approach has not been previously addressed in the literature and represents a computationally tractable method to allocate volunteer, renewable and non-renewable resources to tasks in highly volatile crisis scenarios without requiring probabilistic resource or demand characterizations.

The impact of supply disruptions from unplanned events can cause goods shortage, limited responsiveness and high opportunity cost thus compromising development aid programmes' achievement targets. These situations force humanitarian aid agencies to develop new strategies for effectively managing their supplies. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the foundation of humanitarian supply chain resilience through the development of an adapted Kraljic portfolio model.

Action research was used to adapt and validate the Kraljic portfolio model to the development aid context. The research team worked with a humanitarian aid agency in developing criterions and used Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) in weighting those key criterions.

The adapted portfolio model was able to evaluate purchases done by the aid agency by incorporating different perspectives related to the strategic importance of purchase and supply vulnerability. In particular, development aid programmes require large supplies annually. Better classification offers improved visualisation of purchases, leading to a more precise adoption of mitigation strategies and policies to minimise supply disruption risks.

Adapting the Kraljic portfolio model is a stepping-stone to building humanitarian supply chain resilience. The proposed humanitarian supply chain resilience framework is based on the foundation that current humanitarian supply chain needs to be re-engineered. In order to re-engineer, the supply base strategy must first be revisited.

Many aid agencies do not have a holistic view on their purchases and commonly apply a transactional classification of purchases that only considers the consumption values. Purchasing strategies mostly focus on cost minimisation, whereas risk mitigations have been disregarded. The proposed portfolio model overcomes these drawbacks. Societal impact may be limited but development aid agencies will be able to offer more reliable aid delivery as part of their mandate.

The proposed portfolio model is among the first tool to guide humanitarian aid agencies to develop procurement strategies to alleviate supply disruptions and increase development aid programmes resilience.

This paper aims to provide a commentary and an overview of developments in the field of humanitarianism that could impact theoretical understanding of agility in humanitarian aid supply chains over the past decade.

Authors review papers published on agility in humanitarian aid supply chains from 2006 to 2015 in the four leading Emerald-published logistics and supply chain management journals. These are: Supply Chain Management: An International Journal (SCMIJ); International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management (IJPDLM); International Journal of Operations and Production Management (IJOPM); and Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management (JHLSCM). This paper presents an overview and update of developments that have the potential to influence current thinking and understanding about agility in humanitarian aid supply chains, and humanitarian aid supply chains in general.

Humanitarianism and the environment of Humanitarian organisations are evolving. Such evolution has potential impacts on theoretical discussions and understanding of agility in humanitarian aid supply chains and humanitarian aid supply chains in general.

This is not a critical literature review but an overview. The paper is based on four logistics and supply chain management journals only. However, the paper is based on the work published over a decade.

Points scholars and practitioners to the impacts of Humanitarian Organisations using the relief-development continuum on supply chain design decisions including the pursuit of agility.

It may be the time to consider the relief-development continuum in fresh light and its implications for agility in humanitarian aid supply chains.

This paper seems to be the first paper that highlights the influence of the relief-development continuum model on humanitarian aid supply chain design strategies.

The maritime industry is increasingly impacted by the Internet of things (IoT) through the automation of ships and port activities. This increased automation creates new security vulnerabilities for the maritime industry in cyberspace. Any obstruction in the global supply chain due to a cyberattack can cause catastrophic problems in the global economy. This paper aims to review automatic identification systems (AISs) aboard ships for cyber issues and weaknesses.

The authors do so by comparing the results of two receiver systems of the AIS in the Port of Houston; the JAMSS system aboard the Space Station and the “Harborlights” system for traffic control in the Port.

The authors find that inconsistent information is presented on the location of same ships at the same time in the Port. Upon further investigation with pilots, the authors find that these inconsistencies may be the result of the strength of power with which an AIS is transmitted. It appears the power may be reduced to the AIS in port but that it varies within port and varies by pilot operators. This practice may open the AIS system for tampering.

Further, this inconsistency may require further policy regulation to properly address cyber information in a port.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the concept of agility in humanitarian logistics beyond emergency operations. Since the humanitarian logistics literature focuses primarily on emergencies and sees longer term and regular operations as being conducted in relatively stable and predictable environments, agile practices are usually not associated with humanitarian protracted operations. Therefore, this paper explores the logistics and supply chain environment in such operations in order to identify their basic features and determine if agility is an important requirement.

Using a case study of the United Nations World Food Programme, the authors collected and analysed qualitative and quantitative data on the characteristics of protracted operations, the risks and uncertainties most frequently encountered, their impact, and the ways that field logisticians manage contingencies.

The research demonstrates that unpredictability and disruptions exist in protracted operations. Therefore, short-term operational adjustments and agile practices are needed in order to support the continuity of humanitarian deliveries.

Future research should focus on a wider range of humanitarian organisations and move from a descriptive to a prescriptive approach in order to inform practice. Notwithstanding these limitations, the study highlights the need for academics to broaden the scope of their research beyond emergencies and to address the specific needs of humanitarian organisations involved in longer term operations.

This paper is the first empirical research focusing exclusively on the logistics features of humanitarian protracted operations. It provides a more concrete and complete understanding of these operations.