Novel methods for resource allocation in humanitarian logistics considering human suffering

Deprivation cost is often used as a key economic metric of human suffering associated with emergency logistics. An improved approach is proposed for effective and equitable critical resource allocation within emergency logistics that considers human suffering by using this economic representation. A dynamic programming model is constructed for a multi-period resource allocation dispatch problem extracted to represent the disaster response phase, with special attention paid to the human suffering resulting from the delivery delay. Extensive numerical experiments are conducted to validate the computational performance and solution quality of the dynamic programming method. Based on the best solutions, an optimal delivery pattern with a cyclically sequenced feature is identified and its sufficient condition is provided as well. Furthermore, a piecewise linear method is proposed to accommodate large-scale instances that cannot be applied to the “Cyclic Delivery Approach”.