Determination of identical afad warehouses for faster response in disaster relief

Beneficiaries are provided from pre-positioned inventory after a disaster strike, this is why making these materials ready for dispatch is of vital significance for an effective response. In the classical approach, using permanent warehousing with shelves is considered mainly on pre-positioning of relief materials. As an original idea implemented in Turkey, pre-positioning of relief supplies using freight containers for storage of relief supplies is considered. Turkey is faced with frequent natural disasters due to its climatic, tectonics, seismic and topographic structure; hence, experienced unacceptable life losses and damages. Floods, avalanches, landslides, fires can be give as an example for these natural disasters, but the most important one is earthquakes. Turkey is located on one of the most active seismic zones, North Anatolian Fault (NAF) line. Earthquakes are the most destroying natural disasters happened in Turkey related to the number of causalities and financial damage. Recently, Republic of Turkey Prime Ministry Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (i.e. AFAD in Turkish) located 25 container warehouses to different cities in Turkey to respond disasters effectively and deliver relief supplies to beneficiaries quickly. The relief supplies stored in containers are tents, beds, blankets, cover sheets, and kitchen kits. Currently, warehouses are not operated identically and the capacity of warehouses are not used effectively. Some warehouses store one type of item and none from other types. Therefore, several warehouses have to be activated during a response operation to fully satisfy the needs of beneficiaries for each relief item type. The aim of this study is to investigate the benefits of operating identical (i.e. having a proper level of inventory from each relief item type) AFAD warehouses using current total capacity in disaster relief operations in Turkey. A location-(re)allocation type of mathematical model is developed to decide on how to use existing warehouses efficiently. The model is tested with 3500 different scenarios using 175 past earthquake data. Different scenarios are based on the available amounts at the supply points and whether identical warehouse option is allowed or not. The results are examined in terms of two performance measures: (1) demand weighted distance (2) usage frequency of warehouses, and (3) conversion frequency of warehouses to an identical one. The results indicate savings for the proposed identical warehouse model.