Disaster Relief: Who Ya' Gonna Call?

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Fires! Oil spills! Floods! Terrorists! Tornadoes! Urban violence! Super-typhoons! Wars! Volcanoes! When disaster strikes around the globe, Americans are quick to respond with assistance for the victims. University of Arkansas researcher Matt Waller is starting to look at ways to help organizations respond more rapidly and effectively.

"While there are a few large organizations involved in disaster relief, the majority of relief work is done by dozens of small agencies and organizations," Waller explained. "Each of them has different strengths and capabilities and it is a real challenge to match the needs of disaster victims with the organizations that can meet them."

Enter supply chain management, a natural association for Waller, an associate professor of marketing and transportation in the Sam M. Walton College of Business. His expertise in industrial logistics, coupled with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States and the subsequent allied military action in Afghanistan, led him to investigate how human needs are met in times of disaster.

What he found is a loosely affiliated collaboration of dozens of non-government organizations (NGOs) and almost no research into how they deliver their assistance to needy victims. There are hundreds of secular and faith-based NGOs and it is difficult for any one person or group to know about the capabilities of many other organizations.

"Even with their best efforts, needs may remain unmet or an organization may expend a lot of energy and resources to meet a need that could be done more easily and efficiently by another group, if they were aware of the problem," said Waller.

Supply chain management is a cornerstone of current business practices. Manufacturers use it to coordinate delivery of raw materials, schedule production, track inventory, process orders and deliver goods and services. Even large non-profit organizations, such as public school districts, universities and government entities, use supply chain management tools for ordering, scheduling and tracking activities.

Just compiling a list of all NGOs engaged in disaster relief would be a daunting task. Knowing what resources they have available at any given time is impossible with current resources. This is exactly the kind of problem that supply chain management might solve, but not enough is known about the logistics problems inherent in disaster relief to implement a computer-based strategy.

"These are non-profit organizations. Their labor force is mostly volunteers and their capitalization is from donations. Their money goes to disaster victims, not to research," said Waller. "So very little research has been done. That’s unfortunate because use of standard supply chain management tools could allow these organizations to achieve their goals of cutting costs and improving the delivery of their services."

Implementation of supply chain management solutions would also allow the NGOs to make their operations more visible to their volunteers and donors. These groups often want information about the specific charitable activities that the organization conducts. Supply chain management could allow them to provide more accurate, real-time information about relief projects and the financial and human needs facing the relief agency.

"The work that these organizations do is enormous," Waller explained. "While the United States military may do the initial ship-in of relief supplies almost everywhere in the world, it is the NGOs that assess the needs, receive the hand-off from the military and do the street-level work of getting relief to the people that need it."

Waller is currently researching application of supply chain management tools to improve the delivery of disaster relief. "If we can help these organizations use their existing resources more effectively, we can greatly increase their ability to meet their disaster relief goals," Waller said.