Objective Functions Study On Humanitarian Logistics Considering Deprivation Level

In recent years,natural disasters occur frequently and cause enormous damage to the global economy,society and the environment.No countries in the world could be immune to disaster but only with different disaster risk index.As global natural disaster risk continues to rise,disaster management has become an important topic for the whole world.Humanitarian logistics is the core component of emergency management,it plays the key role in saving the affected people and minimizing losses.The fundamental difference between humanitarian logistics and commercial logistics lies in strategic goals.Commercial logistics pursues profit maximization,while humanitarian logistics aims at alleviating human suffering is the main goal of.However,the scholars have not reached consensus on how to effectively quantify"human suffering",which become the biggest obstacle to constructing the objective function of humanitarian logistics.Previous studies humanitarian logistics mainly use objective functions such as the minimization of logistics costs,the minimization of unmet need or other alternative goals.These objectives have obviously deviated from the basic goal of humanitarian logistics.The research gap in objective function has seriously hinders the transformation of traditional operation knowledge into disaster operations management.To evaluate and quantify human suffering in disaster relief situation,this paper proposes a new concept as "deprivation level" and defines it as the degree of human suffering caused by lack of access to a good or service.To discover the features of deprivation level,the study collects data from respondents with and without disaster experience through field investigation and experiments.Then,using a numerical rating scale method,deprivation level functions for different relief supplies are estimated.At last,the study points out the attributes of the estimated deprivation level functions and analyses the application of the functions in relief operations.Through empirical research and quantitative modeling on deprivation level.This paper has obtained the following conclusion:(1)Actual relief beneficiaries estimate human suffering differently from individuals without prior disaster experience.Therefore,humanitarian logistics and disaster management practitioners and researchers should pay attention to collecting data from disaster-affected populations.(2)Human suffering can be measured and quantified.In addition,the degree of human suffering caused by lack of supplies can be expressed as logistic growth functions,namely,deprivation level functions.(3)Deprivation level functions estimated by NRS method demonstrate reliability.The functions are promising for use in humanitarian logistics models and help select the best relief operation plan from the perspective of beneficiaries.The concept of deprivation level and its quantization method proposed in this paper provides innovative and promising methods for humanitarian logistics optimization and assessment.Furthermore,deprivation level functions will help bridge the gap between traditional commercial logistics and humanitarian logistics so that the commercial research achievements can be integrated into disaster emergency logistics research.