Location-allocation analysis of humanitarian distribution plans: a case of United Nations Humanitarian Response Depots.

The United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD) coordinated 515 different shipments (2,420,258 km in total) from six UNHRD depots to 88 different countries to provide a 27,343 m³ volume of products in 2018. The main purpose of the proposed study is to investigate the current distribution plan and identify the potential improvements using operations research techniques. Maximization of the number of covered people, minimization of the traveled distance, and also analyzing the necessity of the response depots are the problems that need to be addressed for UNHRD. Several methods are applied to the UNHRD network for the first time in the literature, and it is aimed to provide a practical solution considering reductions in total distance, time, and cost. To achieve this, three different location-allocation models are devised and deployed on the real UNHRD distribution network, including maximum coverage, P-median, and set covering. As a result of utilizing the P-median model, the total traveled distance is reduced by 58%, and the most significant depots are identified as Accra and Dubai under various distance limitations using the maximum coverage and set covering models. When it comes to the application and managerial implications of the proposed study, the biggest part of demand was supplied by the Dubai depot before the P-median application, and the Accra depot now has the biggest part. Therefore, it is required to increase the volume of the Accra depot. In addition, Accra Depot is preferred 28 times according to the maximum covered model application, with 6 different coverage limits. From this point of view, it is necessary to have efficient and effective planning for the Accra depot in particular. With the set covering method, it is demonstrated the minimum and maximum ranges to serve demand points with the number of the opened depot(s). The most important contribution of the paper to the literature is to address and improve a real humanitarian aid logistics problem using well-known location-allocation models. The study provides a better understanding of the system to have advanced managerial insight by considering the UNHRD logistic network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]