HUMANITARIAN LOGISTICS IN THE DISASTER RELIEF SUPPLY CHAIN: STATE OF THE ART

The goal of this work is to undertake a review of the literature on humanitarian logistics and disaster relief supply chain, to highlight the progress of research and to afford direction for the authors’ future work. To achieve this goal, different books and articles on humanitarian logistics, relief supply chain and disaster management were consulted, to finally come up with a literature framework that provides firstly the different definitions of humanitarian logistics and its activities, then, move on to the concept of the relief supply chain and its stages, underlining its difference with the commercial supply chain, then continue with the concept of disaster and its different classifications. This is in order to prepare a disaster map which will encompass both natural and manmade disasters. Furthermore, the process of disaster management, activities and measures taken in disaster situations were analysed and explained. Finally, this paper proposes a framework for managing risks in a relief supply chain context. Such a framework aims at not only determining the key critical disaster, using criticality as a risk indicator, but also at providing a tool for decision making before, during and after a disaster.