Lecture: Emergency Logistics Issues Impacting the Response to Katrina
October 23, 2009
11:00
Location: | SOM 112 (wheelchair accessible) |
|---|---|
Contact: |
Professor Anna Nagurney, (413) 545-5635, nagurney@gbfin.umass.edu |
Professor José Holguín-Veras of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will deliver this lecture as part of the Fall 2009 Operations Research / Management Science Seminar series. All are invited to attend.
TITLE: Emergency Logistics Issues Impacting the Response to Katrina: What Went Wrong? What Could We Do to Avoid a Repeat?
Abstract: Extreme events pose serious logistical challenges to emergency and aid organizations active in preparation, response and recovery operations, as the disturbances they bring about have the potential to suddenly turn normal conditions into chaos. Under these conditions, delivering the critical supplies (e.g., food, water, medical supplies) urgently required becomes an extremely difficult task because of the severe damages to the physical and virtual infrastructures and the very limited, or non-existent, transportation capacity. In this context, the recovery process is made more difficult by the prevailing lack of knowledge about the nature and challenges of emergency supply chains. As a result, the design of reliable emergency logistic systems is hampered by the lack of: knowledge about the particulars of how formal and informal (emergent) supply chains operate and interact; methods to properly analyze and coordinate the flows of both priority and non-priority goods; and, in general, scientific methods to analyze logistic systems under extreme conditions.
The presentation attempts to contribute to the study of this important problem by providing a succinct description of the key logistical issues that plagued the Katrina response. The logistical failures following Hurricane Katrina, that in August 2005 devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast, provide an example of the need to significantly improve the efficiency of the supply chains to the site of an extreme event. The paper is based, to a great extent, on public accounts of the event and the interviews conducted by the authors during a number of field visits to the Katrina impacted area in the aftermath of the event, as part of a research project funded by the National Science Foundation.
In the presentation, Professor Holguín-Veras will first describe the results of the research conducted about the reasons that explain the logistical debacle. Then, in the second part of the presentation, he will discuss policy implications and analytical formulations to ensure an efficient flow of critical supplies to a site impacted by a natural or a man-made disaster.
More information about this guest speaker.
This series is organized by the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. Support for this series is provided by the Isenberg School of Management, the Department of Finance and Operations Management, and the John F. Smith Memorial Fund.
