The number of acute and permanent catastrophes has increased by six times in the last forty years. Current examples like the earthquake in North Italy underline once more that measures like an efficient emergency response and a controlled long-term recovery are essential. Up to now, 50 to 80 percent of collected donations raised by aid agencies are spent on logistics. Through better and more cost-efficient processes in logistics great savings can be achieved. This is the starting point for the Humanitarian Logistics Council of the BVL (German Logistics Association).
The Humanitarian Logistics Council is lead by Prof. Dr.- Ing. Hellingrath who holds the Chair for Information Systems and Supply Chain Management at the Westfalian Wilhelms-University in Münster. The council connects about 35 organizations from aid, industry, trade and service, and research.
Objecitve:
The council aims to develop solution approaches for a sustainable improvement of Humanitarian Logistics, which is based on the results of the 1st BVL Humanitarian Logistics Council, which was lead by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Baumgarten from 2010-2011. The results of the 1st council are published in German, as seen below.
Key subjects:
- Platform to support logistics in disaster operations
- Conception of a platform for the support of aid agencies through members of the BVL network Identifying a group of experienced logistics experts that are willing to function as advisors for aid agencies or participate actively in disaster operations
- Internationalization
- Transfer of the 1st council’s insights into and further discussions with the international community Invitation of renowned international representatives to council meetings Publication of the council’s results and documentation in English
- Get Seaports Ready for Disaster
- Development of a program for the logistic coordination of seaports in case of disaster Conception of a pilot project with harbor operators and other service providers in logistics
- Expansion of the IT requirements profile from the 1st council
- Identifying and reprocessing the requirements profile for IT systems Consideration of location based services or crisis mapping approaches Creation of a base for technological innovations in context of humanitarian logistics software.
| Project status | finished |
| Project time | 05/2012 – 04/2013 |
| Group | Chair for Information Systems and Supply Chain Management (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bernd Hellingrath) |
| Funding source | Bundesvereinigung Logistik e.V. / BVL International |
| Project number | 883441 |
| Keywords | Humanitarian Logistics, process analysis, community management, sea-ports |