A proposed framework for enhancing a Supply Chain Management System to support flood disaster relief operations

The big floods that hit Malaysia in December 2014 to January 2015 affected more than 200,000 people and caused 21 fatalities. Shortage of food supply, clean water, and problems caused by unreliable communication continued to affect flood victims even after the flood water had receded. As aid is crucial, the correct management of the supply chain is important to allow a correct and relevant assistance to the needy population. Thus, the Supply Chain Management (SCM) system, which includes inventory management system, automatic matching of supply and demand, consumption trend analysis and data visualization is critical so that the delivery of humanitarian aid can be executed on time, which in turn reduces the impact of the disaster. Lack of either one of these components can lead to problems of forecasting the needs of the flood victims and causes unnecessary delays in decision making. The main objective of this paper is to propose a framework for SCM to support flood disaster relief operation and describe the different phases within the supply chain of food aid in a humanitarian crisis. This proposed framework is to enhance the existing SCM system so that the three phases involved in a flood disaster, which are pre-disaster, during disaster and post-disaster can be managed in a more systematic way. Based on the proposed framework, a supply chain management system can be developed to include inventory management system for monitoring, managing and distributing goods; matching of supply and demand for overcoming demand uncertainty; and data visualization for quick decision making.