Analyzing the barriers to humanitarian supply chain management: A case study of the Tehran Red Crescent Societies

Billions of people are affected by worldwide natural and man-made disasters each year. There is considerable evidence that the number of disasters is increasing, but there is still relatively little-published work aimed at improving the understanding of the different barriers of the humanitarian supply chain (HSC) and finding suitable solutions for dealing with them. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of HSC barriers in the context of a case study of the Tehran Red Crescent Societies. An integrated approach using Fuzzy Delphi and the Best-Worst method (BWM) has been used for analyzing the barriers. Based on the literature and interviews with experts, 28 barriers of the humanitarian supply chain were identified. According to the Fuzzy Delphi result, 22 barriers were assessed that subsequently classified into 9 categories. After that, the BWM method calculated the importance of each barrier. The findings showed that Cultural, Managerial, and Educational barriers are the important barriers. This research provides useful guidelines for policy makers so that they can benefit from the results to optimize their solutions.