Sustainability in Humanitarian Logistics—Why and How?

Abstract

Concepts in humanitarian logistics have been a field of increasing interest as well as research and publication activities in the last decade, especially triggered by the response and logistics failures of the 2004 Haiti earthquake. Since then, many things have changed, inside humanitarian organizations (NGOs) with more professional logistics management and preparedness concepts as well as within government organizations, namely the UN organizations with the OCHA coordination effort in order to improve global alignment of humanitarian logistics assets and processes. Also, logistics research has contributed largely to the new professional development of humanitarian logistics, i.e. by transferring and adapting concepts from business logistics to the humanitarian sector or applying many field and case studies in order to understand the specific requirements and conditions in the field better.