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The transport network is the backbone of relief delivery operations during natural disasters such as typhoons. In this study, we constructed a transport network model connecting the cities and municipalities of the Visayas island group in the Philippines with their regional relief or food hubs. Using this model, we simulated relief delivery under various damage scenarios arising from the impact of a chosen typhoon. Using Typhoon Haiyan ("Yolanda") as an example, we measured the relief delivery efficiency of the transport network over a range of damage scenarios relative to the baseline undamaged case. We find that the Visayas transport network is sensitive to small damages, with 30 out of 251 town centers (12%) getting disconnected from the network and relief delivery efficiency dropping to 75%, resulting in time delays of up to 12 h, when just 1% of the nodes are damaged. Our results explain the difficulty of achieving timely relief delivery efforts in the aftermath of typhoons, especially in archipelagic geographies. We also present a prototype decision support tool that can efficiently generate simulations of multiple projected scenarios, including different typhoon paths and additional food hub locations, to help decision-makers forecast expected improvements in relief delivery efficiency. This tool underlines the importance of strategic prepositioning of relief goods and data-driven disaster risk reduction and management plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given school enrollments but in the absence of a student residence census, we present a gravity-like model to infer the residential distribution of enrolled students across various administrative units. Multi-scale analysis of the effects of aggregation across different administrative levels allows for the identification of administrative units with sub-optimally located schools and highlights the challenges in allocating resources. Using this method, we verify that the current scheme of free cross-enrollment across administrative boundaries is needed in achieving universal education in the Philippines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]