Equitable location-allocation driven by socioeconomic concerns

This paper strives to design an equitable location-allocation approach in humanitarian supply chains under resource scarcity, where targeting more vulnerable people is fundamental to building an effective and fair disaster management response. For this purpose, we develop a novel multi-objective relief aid prepositioning supply chain model to address various conflicting objectives that aim to capture not only the logistics costs but also the effectiveness of the disaster response operation and a measure of equity to mitigate an unfair relief aid allocation. Our model is built upon the premise that by strengthening both the coping capacity and the resilience of more vulnerable communities, we can reduce their susceptibility to climate-related hazards and trigger a faster and more effective response in the disaster aftermath. In this way, the long-term development of these communities is supposed to be less compromised, which is aligned with three Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the promotion of economic development and welfare: Goal 1, end poverty in all its forms everywhere; Goal 11, make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable; and Goal 13, take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. Our overall results are based on weather-related disasters in Brazil and span more than 20 years of disaster data. We empirically show how more deprived areas can be prioritized in receiving humanitarian aid. As the utmost goal, we hope to help policymakers and disaster managers to justify the selective targeting of specific communities over others in the injection of resources, thus contributing to more sustainable and resilient livelihoods by guaranteeing socially-equitable disaster management practices across poor and marginalized communities in Brazil.