TITLE: Last Mile Distribution in Humanitarian Relief

SPEAKER: Burcu Balcik, Ph.D. Candidate
Industrial Engineering, University of Washington

DATE / TIME: Friday, February 29, 2008 / 2:30 - 3:45 p.m.

LOCATION: Room 453 Mohler Lab, 200 W. Packer Avenue


ABSTRACT: The trends in the number, impact, and scale of recent global disasters and their associated relief efforts have brought growing attention to disaster response operations. In the first part of this talk, we will introduce humanitarian relief chains, discuss how they differ from commercial supply chains, and give some examples of research topics in humanitarian relief chain management. Next, we will focus on last mile distribution operations in disaster relief. The main decisions in the last mile, which depend on equitable allocation of relief supplies among affected populations, focus on vehicle routing and delivery scheduling. We will introduce a mathematical model and a solution method based on simulated annealing that supports local distribution decisions, and finally discuss the applicability of our model to a real-world disaster relief operation.


BIOGRAPHY: Burcu Balcik is a Ph.D. candidate in Industrial Engineering at the University of Washington. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial Engineering from Middle East Technical University, Turkey. Her research focuses on humanitarian relief chain management and develops mathematical models and analytical tools that support practical decision-making in humanitarian relief systems. Her work addresses various topics and problems in humanitarian relief including strategic network design, last mile distribution, performance measurement, and coordination.