Pity the poor nongovernmental organizations trying to work in North Korea…It is, by all accounts, a lose-lose situation. 1 Brad Glosserman The Japan Times In this issue of Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, Yim, Choi, and Van Rooyen provide us with a unique glimpse into the sensitivities and complexities surrounding the delivery of humanitarian aid in North Korea and the compelling struggle tha...

Resource Allocation (RAlloc) is one of the most important tasks in organizing humanitarian response to humanitarian crises. It is not only that adequate and efficient RAlloc save lives and reduce damages caused by humanitarian crises, but RAlloc must be fast and efficient to save time and resources. Given that RAlloc is a type of a decision making process, it is expected that decision on RAlloc...

The management of humanitarian logistical operations was for many years the weak link in the relief chain. Within the advent of big data, this challenge has been changing life and the way of dealing in the humanitarian field. Data is increasing exponentially due to the growing digitization of modern life and the further evolution of data collection in combination with the digital technology. Mo...

The success of humanitarian relief efforts is contingent upon the quality and timeliness of information provided to both the decision making and coordinating functions. Poor or fragmented information can lead to inappropriate decisions or poorly coordinated activities. This research focuses on how the application of spatially aware technologies can allow the information dimension of the challen...

Disasters trigger the need for relief items. The flows of relief items to the beneficiaries in the disaster area are determined by humanitarian logistics networks. The setup and operations of such networks can be supported by employing Operations Research models. Several models, based on different methodologies are available to support decision-making in the field of humanitarian logistics. Thi...

In this paper, we investigate the possible impact of crowdsourcing on organisational practices. We answer the research question of whether and to what extent the practices of crowdmapping impact humanitarian organisations. To answer this question, we examine a crowdmapping initiative during a natural disaster. The data collection is based on forty interviews with different actors including crow...

Health information systems (HIS) in emergencies face a double dilemma: the information necessary to understand and respond to humanitarian crises must be timely and detailed, whereas the circumstances of these crises makes it challenging to collect it. Building on the technical work of the Health Metrics Network on HIS and starting with a systemic definition of HIS in emergencies, this paper re...

Humanitarian crisis require a responsive and agile response. The number of professional and volunteer organization involved in the response to humanitarian disasters has increased over the past year, making coordination more important than ever before. This paper discusses the main issues of Humanitarian Disaster Management (HDM) coordination and the different modes applied on the field. We arg...

Humanitarian Supply Chain (HSC) performance is a key factor for disaster response. In order to be more responsive, the typical humanitarian supply strategy has evolved from a centralized to a decentralized network, generally at regional level. The objective was to reduce lead-times and costs. However, after a decade of working, organizations like the Americas and Caribbean International Federat...