Towards an Agent-Based Humanitarian Relief Inventory Management System

Natural disasters have reached unpredictable intensity around the world during the last two decades. Therefore, rapid response to the urgent relief in an efficient way is necessary for alleviation of disaster impact in the affected areas. Humanitarian Supply Chain Management plays a crucial role for disaster response management. Warehouse and inventory management is a key activity. Its effectiveness and efficiency are challenging issues during emergency response. In fact, by ensuring appropriate fast and well organized distribution of emergency relief supplies, damages would be mitigated and more lives saved. This paper draws first a literature review to better define humanitarian supply chain management and highlight inventory management characteristics and needs in a post-disasters context. An agent-based model and a simulator are developed in order to enable decision makers find efficient scenarios to respond effectively to urgent requests following a disaster. First simulation results are discussed.