Collaborative Prepositioning in Regional Humanitarian Networks
Prof. Dr. Burcu Balçık and her students have collaborated with the Emergency Supply Pre-positioning Strategy (ESUPS) to improve the efficiency of humanitarian supply chains using collaborative practices. This project is funded by TÜBİTAK 1002. The project aims to investigate the effects of postponement (delaying the branding process of stocks) and stock sharing (sharing these unbranded stocks among agencies) strategies on post-disaster performance metrics such as demand fulfilment, response speed, and inventory utilization. A data-driven simulation model is developed to evaluate the benefits of the proposed strategies in a complex humanitarian supply chain network with multiple agencies and multiple countries. A data set of historical disasters in the Caribbean region as well as inventory and logistics data sets from ESUPS’s partner humanitarian agencies (such as UNHRD, IFRC, STC, ACF, WHH, and USAID) are fed to this simulation model. The results of this project provide actionable insights and recommendations to humanitarian agencies. The results are shared with humanitarian agencies at the “Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Week (HNPW) – 2022”.