Reconfiguration of Foodbank Network Logistics to Cope with a Sudden Disaster

Abstract

Foodbank networks provide adequate infrastructure and perform logistics activities to supply food to people in need on a day-to-day basis. However, in the case of a sudden event, such as a natural disaster, they must reconfigure themselves to quickly and fairly satisfy the needs of the affected people, despite the rapid changes in supply and demand, as much as possible. In contrast to most of the studies in the humanitarian logistics literature, which have focused on aid distribution—the downstream part of the supply chain—this paper extends the field of view upstream, explicitly considering supply (or, in the case of foodbanks, donors). To this end, we compare several network design strategies in order to assess the potential benefits of centralized decisions in a context where, in practice, there exists no formal protocol to support bank coordination. We propose a mathematical formulation for the design of such logistics processes, including collection, transshipment, and aid distribution, over a network of foodbanks inspired by the real case of Bancos de Alimentos de México (BAMX). The case considers several categories of food and encompasses restrictions on their mixture to ensure the nutritional quality of the delivered food, distinct from other models in the literature. Finally, we assess the differences in the strategies through the use of effectiveness and efficiency performance metrics.

Keywords

• humanitarian logistics
• relief distribution
• network design problem
• food banks