RAPID: Field Investigation on the Socio-Technical Features of Post-Disaster Re-sponse Logistics in the Aftermath of the Nepal Earthquake

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY

Investigators

Abstract

Disasters can generate devastating human, social, and economic losses. The extreme and frequently sudden nature of these events poses significant challenges for the organizations involved in the delivery of critical relief supplies. Ensuring an efficient and timely flow of critical supplies to a disaster is, without any doubt, a challenging endeavor with huge economic and social impacts. Improving the state of the art and practice of post-disaster humanitarian logistics (PD-HL) is extremely important. As part of the fieldwork funded by this Rapid Response Research (RAPID) grant, the team will study how the local social networks - an integral part of the local community - interact with the technical tasks that are part of the relief effort. This is important because research has highlighted that the nature of the interactions between the social and the technical aspects in PD-HL operations influence disaster response effectiveness. These "socio-technical interactions" reflect the way in which the technical tasks are structured, and the way in which the social networks are integrated (or not) and perform the technical tasks. In post-disaster environments - where the entire social system is under stress, the social aspects of PD-HL acquire tremendous importance - playing a huge role in determining the effectiveness of the effort. Learning from actual disaster responses is an important to help minimize the negative impacts of disasters on our citizens and the economy. The team will study the mechanisms through which social networks identify, gather, deliver, and distribute relief supplies. Specifically, the team will collect perishable data on organizational involvement, activity, roles, collaboration, and location. These data will be used to test assumptions derived from pre-vious events taking advantage of the insight gained on how the socio-technical interactions influence the response. Data collection will include short and informal and in-depth interviews with the individuals involved in the PD-HL efforts, at all levels of action (e.g., international, national, regional, local, and community levels), from all groups (e.g., established, emergent, extending), and at all levels of power (e.g., decision-makers, operational personnel). Furthermore, information will be gathered on critical and non-critical supply flow estimates, challenges to the relief effort, solutions developed to contend with challenges, and estimates of unmet demands of critical supplies. The work is very important because an enhanced understanding of the socio-technical interactions will facilitate the implementation of procedures that foster disaster response effectiveness and limit the negative impacts of problematic practices and behaviors. Doing so would reduce the overall impacts of disasters in the United States and abroad.