Title: Locating suppliers in peace and disaster time with uncertain demand and traffic

Authors: Shao-Long Hu; Zhi-Hua Hu; Yan-Ping Meng

Addresses: Logistics Research Center, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai 200135, China ' Logistics Research Center, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai 200135, China; School of economics and management, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China ' Logistics Research Center, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai 200135, China

Abstract: In emergency supply chain for disaster relief, as a commercial entity, to guarantee the quality of service, the supplier needs to satisfy the uncertain demand for its customers in peace time, and cope with the uncertain demand and traffic in disaster time. To coordinate the deployment problems of the suppliers in peace and disaster time, a two-stage stochastic location model is proposed to cope with uncertain demand in peace time and the uncertain demand and traffic in disaster time. First, a stochastic integer linear programming (SILP) model is formulated to minimise the total transportation cost in peace time with uncertain demand. Then, another SILP model is formulated to minimise the total transportation time in disaster time with uncertain traffic. A case study is provided to effectively study the location strategy. When coping with uncertain demand, the transportation cost will increase by about 6% if the total demand is less than 1400 in the case. When coping with uncertain traffic, transportation time will decrease by 0.7-9.2%.

Keywords: emergency logistics; social emergency resource; uncertain demand; uncertain traffic; SILP; stochastic integer linear programming; emergency management; emergency supply chains; supply chain management; SCM; disaster relief; quality of service; QoS; stochastic modelling; location model; location strategy; transport costs; transport time.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEM.2013.059863

International Journal of Emergency Management, 2013 Vol.9 No.4, pp.312 - 326

Received: 28 Jan 2013
Accepted: 12 Sep 2013
Published online: 03 Mar 2015 *

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