Demand Forecasting and Total Cost Minimization of Disaster Relief Network

Journal article

Authors/Editors

Strategic Research Themes

Publication Details

Author list: Charoenchai Khompatraporn;Sasipar Sridao

Publication year: 2020

Journal: วารสารไทยการวิจัยดำเนินงาน (2287-0210)

Volume number: 8

Issue number: 2

Start page: 27

End page: 41

Number of pages: 15

ISSN: 2287-0210

URL: https://ph02.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/TJOR/article/view/173387

Abstract

Rapid degradation of the environment contributes to rising severity of disasters in recent years. Once a disaster hits, a disaster relief aid delivery mechanism is triggered to deliver the relief aids to the needed victims. In many cases, timely deliveries of these aids are vital to the survival of the disaster victims. Therefore, it is important to sufficiently stock these relief aids under uncertainty of disaster. This research assimilates the situation of a humanitarian organization. There are five different relief aids and 10 humanitarian aid centers throughout the country. The majority of the demands of the relief aids exhibit intermittent and lumpy behaviors, so they are forecasted using Croston and Syntetos & Boylan methods together with seasonality index to give more accurate results. Then a mathematical optimization model in which its objective is to minimize the total transportation and inventory holding costs between humanitarian aids centers is formulated. The model also allows transportation of relief aids between neighboring centers. The model is tested and compared with the current practice that only the transportation of the relief aids from the central location is permitted. The results show that with the transportation method proposed in this research the total cost can be reduced up to 13% in a certain month due to short transportation of the relief aids among neighboring centers by which the time for the aids to reach the victims is also reduced.

Keywords

demand forecast, disaster, inventory, transportation