Research On Post-Disaster Emergency Material Supply From The Perspective Of Community Engagement

Affected by environmental and social factors such as global warming and slowing economic growth,frequently occurring natural and man-made disasters have become a new normal for emergency management around the world.In response to disasters,relief organizations must organize and coordinate relief resources,and deliver emergency materials in a timely and effective way to the survivors to alleviate their suffering.In this dissertation,emergency materials refer to critical supplies that are widely needed by affected people to maintain their daily lives after a disaster.Demand management and relief distribution are key to the support of emergency materials.In terms of demand management,the present literature is mainly focused on demand forecasting,with little attention to demand control.There is almost no theoretical and empirical analysis on how to prevent and control excess demand generated by “panic buying”in the after math of large disasters.As for relief distribution,existing research mainly focuses on location,distribution,and transportation optimization problems,while ignoring the organization and arrangement of distribution activities,that is,the distribution patterns.Besides,in the field of disaster management and humanitarian logistics,existing studies mainly focus on relief organizations.Not enough attention has been paid to utilizing the resources and capacity of the affected areas,as well as transforming the disaster-affected community from “beneficiaries” to “actors” of relief operations.In response to these research issues,this dissertation proposes several improvements.First,this dissertation identifies the key success factors of the emergency material supply system,constructs a hierarchical structure model for the system elements using Interpretative Structural Modeling method,and identifies the driving and dependence power of each element using MICMAC approach,which aims to establish a theoretical interpretation framework for the research on the demand management and distribution pattern of critical supplies from the perspective of community participation.Then,from the demand side of emergency material supply,taking the facemasks buying behavior in the early stage of the COVID-19 epidemic as an example,this dissertation discusses the “panic buying” of critical supplies in the context of disasters,and the impact of disaster characteristics and individual’s social-economic characteristics on disaster-related buying behaviors(DRBBs).An ordered Logit model is established to analyze the factors affecting the purchase quantity decision,while a binomial Logit model is established to analyze the donation willingness of people with excess facemasks,aiming to evaluating the potential of the donation/return plan to correct the negative effects of DRBBs.Third,an agent-based simulation framework is designed to analyze the impact of information sharing and crowd movement on the local disaster relief distribution,as well as the appropriateness of three distribution patterns(i.e.,Agency Centric Efforts(ACE),Partially Integrated Efforts(PIE),and Collaborative Aid Networks(CAN),which differ in the level of integration with the social fabric of the impacted area)in different disaster environment.The results of this dissertation suggest that community engagement can improve the efficiency of relief efforts by taking advantage of local communities’ resources and capabilities.DRBBs of affected people aggravate the shortage of critical supplies in the aftermath of disasters.Individuals who consider the disaster would last longer are much more likely to purchase critical supplies exceeding needs in comparison with those who think the disaster would end in a shorter time.Appeals to the public in the affected areas to donate facemasks could help mitigate the shortages created by “panic buying”.Gender,income,and education are the attributes that have the greatest impact on donation willingness.The agent-based simulation of disaster relief distribution shows that,it is the distribution capability determines the performance of distribution patterns,which depend on the extent of integration with affected area’s social fabric.The larger the disaster,the greater need for relief organizations to integrate with the local communities to improve the distribution capability.When supplies are scarce,it is more important to improve the distribution effectiveness and ensure that the supplies are delivered to the survivors.However,when supply is relatively sufficient,the priority is to ensure the fairness of distribution.Different distribution patterns should be adopted according to the priorities of supplies,to prevent low-priority items from occupying the distribution capacity required by high-priority items,resulting in unnecessary deprivation costs.Sharing supplies information can improve distribution efficiency.However,blindly increasing the information sharing level does not always bring positive effects.In addition,the results suggest that unordered movement of affected people will increase the social costs of disaster relief distribution,as it increases the uncertainty of demand.