EURO 2024 Copenhagen
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42. Hybrid simulation-optimization approach for planning relief-aid distribution

Invited abstract in session WA-21: Post-Disaster Relief Distribution, stream OR in Humanitarian Operations (HOpe).

Wednesday, 8:30-10:00
Room: 49 (building: 116)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Mohanad Rezeq
Department of Business Administration, Palestine Ahliya University
2. Tarik Aouam
Department of Business Informatics and Operations Management, Ghent University
3. Frederik Gailly
Business informatics and operations management, Ghent University

Abstract

During times of armed conflict, a number of security check-points are set up by authorities to regulate the movement of commercial and relief trucks into and out of the war region. These security check-points have become highly utilized, because of complex security procedures and increased truck traffic, which heavily slows down the delivery of relief aid. Our research aims to improve the process at the security check-points by redesigning the current process to reduce processing times and relieve congestion at check-point entrance gates. These efforts are then integrated with the proposed decision-support tool (the Clearing Function Distribution Model, CFDM) to minimize the effects of security check-point congestion on the entire humanitarian supply network using a hybrid simulation-optimization approach. Employing business process simulation, the current and re-engineered processes are both simulated, and the simulation output is used to estimate the clearing function (capacity as a function of the workload). Our efforts will contribute to improving the planning of the humanitarian network experiencing congestion at security check-points by minimizing the impact of congestion on the delivery lead time of relief aid to the final destination. For this, the Kerem Abu Salem security check-point in the south of GAZA is used as a case study. The results show that the CFDM tool works better when the Re-engineered-Clearing function's output is applied.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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