Improving visibility of humanitarian supply chains through web-based collaboration

Abstract

The study is intended to demonstrate the pathways for humanitarian supply chains following the well-established models of business supply chains. Information sharing is the core to increase visibility in supply chain collaboration. Sharing instant intelligent decisions between the humanitarian organizations improves the quality of humanitarian relief services as well as reduces the operational cost of the public service. With the use of prevalent web portal technology, humanitarian organization can implement web-based collaboration for e-transactions with partners and donor organizations. The benefit of web-based platform is the ability to interact and quickly form a need specific project in a short period of time by collecting a large number of volunteers, donors, and partners over the globe. The visibility of web-based monitoring of supply chain functions not only benefits the aid agencies to maintain appropriate level of stocking but also ensures high level of public services. The illustration of this study is a starting-point to develop models for humanitarian supply chain and establish future research agenda for emergency preparedness planning.