Identifying and Prioritizing Humanitarian Supply Chain Practices to Supply Food before an Earthquake

Abstract

Objective: The general concern about supplying food is one of the important issues before an earthquake happens. This research aims to present a conceptual model for “humanitarian supply chain practices to supply food before an earthquake” and prioritizing its practices. Methods: This research is applied in nature and it is descriptive regarding the tools and instruments of data collection. After reviewing the related literature and interviewing some experts, 7 criteria and 19 sub-criteria were identified. Then the questionnaire was distributed among the related managers, experts, and academics and 281 questionnaires were completed and gathered. This measuring model was tested according to Structuring Equation Modeling. Furthermore, Fuzzy AHP was used to weight the importance of each practice and its dimensions. Results: Our findings showed that “Monitoring”, “Education”, and “Readiness for logistics and distribution” are the most important dimensions of our conceptual model. So, we used one sample t-test to measure the performance of each practice. Conclusion: Finally, importance-performance matrix was used for prioritizing the practices. We hope that our results will be a good guidance for managers and decision makers of humanitarian supply chain for better understanding of food supplying practices before an earthquake.

Keywords

• Humanitarian supply chain
• Supplying food before earthquake
• Confirmatory Factor Analysis
• Fuzzy AHP
• Importance-performance matrix