Abstract:
This project will concentrate on optimizing the location of relief warehouses in Pakistan to enhance disaster response efficiency and promptness. Pakistan faces severe disaster risks such as floods in Sindh, earthquakes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northern areas of Pakistan, and droughts in Balochistan, which frequently cause devastating damages and destruction of infrastructure and property (Disaster Risk Reduction in Pakistan, 2019). Presently, relief warehouses are located in major urban centers such as Islamabad and Karachi and are controlled by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), with locations being dictated by convenience and not disaster risk, causing delays and inefficiencies in disaster response and relief delivery (Arshad & Iqbal, 2021). This study will concentrate on analyzing disaster frequency data and establishing a disaster frequency-based facility location model in order to determine optimal locations for consolidated and centralized relief warehouses in order to enhance disaster response and relief delivery efficiency and promptness (Balcik & Beamon, 2008). 1.2. Background The humanitarian logistical environment in Pakistan is marked by the high occurrence rate of disaster events such as floods, earthquake, drought, and natural calamities due to climate change, which impacts the supply chain and infrastructure in the country (Pakistan | Global Humanitarian Overview 2023 | Humanitarian Action, 2022). The disaster relief activities in Pakistan are centrally managed by the NDMA, which is arranged in multiple tiers of provincial and district authorities, where the procurement of relief materials/donations, storing of materials in urban areas such as Islamabad and Karachi, and dispatching them to disaster-affected areas take place after the occurrence of disaster (Arshad & Iqbal, 2021). In the case of natural calamities such as floods, which have recently happened in Pakistan and caused such damage that 33 million people have been affected by it, issues have also been raised regarding the pre-positioning of facilities, and therefore, in this case, it is important that the pre-positioning of warehouse facilities is improved because it is evident from the literature that facility management is being utilized in such situations (Pakistan Floods 2022 Post-Disaster Needs Assessment, 2023).
