Because the structural organization of any humanitarian response is so fundamentally influenced by the operating environment, there are as many possible definitions of humanitarian logistics as there are humanitarian programs.
This page portrays the main basics associated to humanitrarian logistics when it comes to support emergency situations, i.e. when the life of population affected by a natural disaster or a major armed conflict is at stake and lead time to rescue them matters.
This page portrays the main basics associated to humanitrarian logistics when it comes to support emergency situations, i.e. when the life of population affected by a natural disaster or a major armed conflict is at stake and lead time to rescue them matters.
Humanitarian logistics is best defined as a support activity to humanitarian operations, also called Support Logistics. This is in sharp contrast to a Logistics of Flow emanating from the private sector[1]. Initially inspired by military operations, but nowadays also influenced by developments in other sectors such as aeronautics, energy and other industries, support logistics - when applied to humanitarian emergencies - describes the organization of all the resources that are required to deploy, maintain and supply emergency programs in acute crisis. In that respect, EHL performance is primarily defined by the objectives of rapid deployment and installation of humanitarian programmes, including for relief workers and patients (e.g. reliability of suppliers, maintainability of equipment, safety of the facilities, transportability). The above-mentioned goals generally prevail over other secondary objectives such as cost control for procurement or stock inventory.
In order to ensure a deployment force that is both agile and reliable, humanitarian organizations active in most emergency situations rely on multi-skilled logisticians able to provide adapted solutions for each new emergency situation (e.g. some logisticians were requested to set-up field hospitals in Tacloban - Philippines in 2013; to provide water supply for Sudanese refugee camps - Maban region in 2012; to build cholera treatment units in Port au Prince - Haiti late 2010; or feeding centers in Oromyia - Ethiopia in 2008, etc.).
Despite the fundamentally unique nature of humanitarian logistics, certain theories aiming to bring it in line with logistics templates emanating from the private sector or - more rarely - from military logistics models, have led to an inappropriate over-simplification, which has distanced it from the reality of operations in the field. This trend towards over-simplified logistics very quickly reduces the field of humanitarian logistics to nothing more than a humanitarian supply chain where, in reality, the supply chain is just one part – albeit an important one – of the whole EHL.
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[1]For Y. Pimor and M. Fender, the logistics of flow is mainly dedicated to transports, warehousing and - in extension - to the regulation of supply flows,production and distribution
In order to ensure a deployment force that is both agile and reliable, humanitarian organizations active in most emergency situations rely on multi-skilled logisticians able to provide adapted solutions for each new emergency situation (e.g. some logisticians were requested to set-up field hospitals in Tacloban - Philippines in 2013; to provide water supply for Sudanese refugee camps - Maban region in 2012; to build cholera treatment units in Port au Prince - Haiti late 2010; or feeding centers in Oromyia - Ethiopia in 2008, etc.).
Despite the fundamentally unique nature of humanitarian logistics, certain theories aiming to bring it in line with logistics templates emanating from the private sector or - more rarely - from military logistics models, have led to an inappropriate over-simplification, which has distanced it from the reality of operations in the field. This trend towards over-simplified logistics very quickly reduces the field of humanitarian logistics to nothing more than a humanitarian supply chain where, in reality, the supply chain is just one part – albeit an important one – of the whole EHL.
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[1]For Y. Pimor and M. Fender, the logistics of flow is mainly dedicated to transports, warehousing and - in extension - to the regulation of supply flows,production and distribution