Humanitarian supply chain redesign using a GIS-based two-stage stochastic model: a case study of earthquake in Tehran

Abstract

The world has experienced many natural and human-made disasters recently. Such disasters can vary from a local residence to a city or even affect a nation or broader areas. This paper presents a multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model for redesigning the humanitarian supply chain network. The proposed two-stage stochastic model optimizes some pre-disaster and post-disaster strategic and tactical decisions, i.e., the location and capacities of facilities, allocation and flow decisions, and pre-positioning strategies. The model aims at minimizing the total fixed and operational costs of the network, minimizing the total distance in the network, and maximizing the total utility of the network. The presented model is validated by examining a real case study focusing on the outbreak of an earthquake in Tehran, the capital city of Iran. Finally, the Pareto optimal solutions of the model are found using the improved augmented ϵ-constraint method, and some managerial implications are presented.