International disaster relief planning with fuzzy credibility

Abstract

As a consequence of more extensive collaboration between countries, the need for better humanitarian relief assistance has become a significant challenge to the international community. In case of a disaster exceeding the national response capacity of the affected country, donor countries provide the relief items, which are then consolidated at collection points to be shipped to points of delivery in the stricken country. After the items are transported to the point of delivery, the responsible authority in distributing aids to vulnerable populations then becomes the national relief agencies. In this context, we propose an international relief planning model that can handle the uncertain information while maximizing the credibility of the international agencies in the most cost efficient way.