Decentralized Multi-Commodity and Multi-Period Mathematical Model for Disaster Relief Goods Location and Distribution using HACO-VNS Hybrid Algorithm

Logistics makes up one of the significant parts of humanitarian organizations. Regarding the natural disasters’ increasing growth, coordination and cooperation in the logistics sector get more and more critical in order to minimize costs and enhance relief effectiveness. Thus, the current study proposes a decentralized multi-commodity and multi-period mathematical model for disaster relief commodities’ location and distribution. The major players of the research are the relief warehouses and the third-party logistics (3PL) organizations. These two players interact through a coordination mechanism, which keeps going until the time no shortage pops up in the system. The involved innovations encompass considering the simultaneous location, inventory, and distribution of aid supplies and relief provision outsourcing and relief goods’ transportation services to 3PL companies. The proposed HACO-VNS hybrid approach-based model has been solved for a case study in Tehran. The results indicate that as the demand increases, the number of established distribution centers increases. Besides, the budget increase leads to the reduction of the relief commodities’ shortage. Moreover, consequently, the present study extracted results that have been made accessible for disaster management practices.