Multimodal Logical Architecture for Emergency Transportation Toward Better Decision Making in Humanitarian Logistics

Humanitarian logistics has emerged as a vital tool to reduce and alleviate the harmful impacts and suffering caused by extreme events. A significant task of planners and decision makers involved in humanitarian logistics is planning for and satisfying the vital needs of the people during highly stochastic disaster/catastrophe conditions. To accomplish this, there is a clear research need to describe and evaluate a multi-modal logical architecture of efficient emergency transportation operations that will support decision makers to generate and evaluate decision alternatives for solving the problems related to transporting vital supplies during highly stochastic disaster conditions. To be more specific, the humanitarian multi-modal logical architecture described in this paper is created as a comprehensive needs assessment effort and knowledge base that can be used in the creation of software tools for the movement of emergency supplies. This paper carefully describes the steps needed to create such a logical architecture for multi-modal humanitarian logistics with an emphasis on the sustainability and resiliency of the emergency relief system in the event of a disaster/catastrophe. During the extensive process of evaluation of the proposed logical architecture, a thorough study and general assessment of the transportation network and infrastructure based on system profiles, availability, allocation, and optimal assignment of critical resources and database requirements are also conducted, followed by a case study applied to the NY-NJ-CT-PA CSA region. Finally, future directions on the usage of this comprehensive logical architecture are discussed.