Dynamic supply chain network design for the supply of blood in disasters: A robust model with real world application

• A robust network design model for the supply of blood during and after disasters.
• Model implementation using real data to design an emergency blood supply network.
• Important insights from tradeoff between solution robustness and model robustness.
• Comparing the proposed approach against an expected value approach.

This paper presents a robust network design model for the supply of blood during and after disasters. A practical optimization model is developed that can assist in blood facility location and allocation decisions for multiple post-disaster periods. The application of the proposed model is investigated in a case problem where real data is utilized to design a network for emergency supply of blood during potential disasters. Our analysis on the tradeoff between solution robustness and model robustness arrives at important practical insights. The performance of the proposed ‘robust optimization’ approach is also compared with that of an ‘expected value’ approach.