Immediate Resource Requirements after Hurricane Katrina

AbstractThe paper focuses on the quantitative study of immediate resource requirements, i.e., the needs that arise in the aftermath of a disaster, which is one of the most severely understudied aspects of humanitarian logistics. The paper develops numerical estimates of these requirements and their temporal patterns using a data set put together by postprocessing the requests made by emergency responders in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The analyses of the data provide a glimpse into what was needed at the site and when. A key finding is that a relatively small number of different items, approximately 150, were requested, which is a fraction of previous estimates that suggested 350–500 different commodities. The analyses reveal that an even smaller number of items concentrated the bulk of the requests: 20 commodities accounted for approximately 30% of the requests, 40 commodities for 47%, and 50 commodities for 56%. The relatively low number of different items makes it easier to preposition these ke...

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