Strategic Planning In The Humanitarian Sector

This book provides humanitarian practitioners and policy makers with a manual for how to apply foresight and strategy in their work. Drawing on extensive research, the book demonstrates in practical terms how embedding futures-focused thinking into practice can help humanitarian actors to enhance their impact and fit for the future. The book provides readers with a step-by-step guide to an innovative combination of tools and methods tested and refined over the course of several years. However, it also goes beyond this, by grounding the approach within the broader ambition of making humanitarian action more effective. Overall, the analytical and strategic processes outlined in this book will accompany a decision maker through every stage of creating a robust, agile and impactful long-term strategy. This accessible guide will be an essential point of reference for practitioners and decision makers in the humanitarian ecosystem, as well as students studying humanitarian affairs, global development, conflict studies and international relations.

This book brings together research in humanitarian operations, behavioral operations and dynamic simulation. Part I outlines the main characteristics and strategic challenges of humanitarian organizations in preparedness, knowledge management, climate change and issues related to refugees and social inclusion. Part II gives an introduction to behavioral operations and experiments in single- and multi-agent settings, followed by discussions on quantal theory, framing effect and possible applications in the humanitarian sector. Part III introduces system dynamics and agent-based modeling and discusses how these techniques can be used to study dynamics and decision-making in humanitarian operations. This book is unique in providing a holistic view of the decision-making process and challenges in the humanitarian sector.

Focusing on the specific challenges of research design and exploring the opportunities of conducting research in humanitarian logistics and supply chain management, this handbook is a significant contribution to future research. Chapters include extensive descriptions of methods used, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages, and the challenges in scoping, sampling, collecting and analysing data, as well as ensuring the quality of studies. Covering a wide variety of topics including risk and resilience and the impact of humanitarian logistics on capacity building, sustainability and the local economy, it also explores the need for scalability and co-ordination in the humanitarian network. Contributors provide important insight on future directions and offer crucial guidance for researchers conducting projects within the field.

A range of recent disasters have demonstrated the critical role of effective logistics in disaster preparation and response in both developing and developed countries. Humanitarian Logistics provides thought-provoking guidance and discussion of the core issues facing those who are involved in managing the logistics of disaster relief. Peter Tatham and Martin Christopher have assembled a broad ranging collection of thoughts, ideas, concepts and approaches contributed by both practitioners and academics that, together, provide an overview of some of the core challenges facing today's humanitarian logistician. With insights from world leading experts in the field, this multi-contributed book provides guidance for best practice and offers potential solutions for effective response in this crucial area. Each chapter of the 2nd edition has been updated to reflect the latest developments, improvements and emerging challenges that have been encountered in this important and rapidly-growing field. This new edition of Humanitarian Logistics also increases the level of input from the practitioner community and broadens the geographic coverage, by introducing new perspectives from Asia and Africa and a number of experienced field practitioners. There are also entire new chapters on: Quality and accountability; Lessons learned from the 2004 Thailand Tsunami and the April 2012 Tsunami warning; Emergency preparedness and the experience of international humanitarian organizations in South East Asia; What next for humanitarian logistics? It also includes chapters that focus on emerging areas of challenge that have attracted recent attention in both practitioner and academic circles, including training and education, inter-agency coordination and information systems management.

Imagine planning an event like the Olympics. Now imagine planning the same event but not knowing when or where it will take place, or how many will attend. This is what humanitarian logisticians are up against. Oversights result in serious consequences for the victims of disasters. So they have to get it right, fast.

In rapidly developing emergencies, it is vital for aid agencies to understand how to establish an agile supply chain that resists the chaos of a crisis and can cater to unknown needs. Now in its fourth edition, Humanitarian Logistics presents chapters from a wide range of academics and practitioners and offers cutting edge research into how complex problems such as distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine and provision of relief to victims of natural disasters can be solved. New chapters cover topics such as cash-based humanitarian logistics (HL) systems, sustainability in a HL context and providing logistics services for humanitarian relief. In recent years, a number of global crises have highlighted the critical role that logistics plays in humanitarian response. There is a vital need to understand how to conduct operations in confused and swiftly changing environments. This book is essential reading for anyone who needs to understand how to effectively manage supply networks during a rapidly developing emergency.

This publication deals with the often-lamented coordination deficit among international relief organizations - mainly the United Nations, non-governmental organizations, and the Red Cross/Crescent Movement - in responding to humanitarian crises. The book begins by reviewing the relevant literature and identifying the most important trends and actors in the international humanitarian arena. Next, it discusses the advantages and disadvantages of existing coordination models in practice, including those promoted by the UN. In addition, the book examines the suitability of organization theory - including network theory - for the diagnosis of coordination deficits and the deduction of a recommended course of action. Building upon organization theory, it then proceeds to develop a theoretical framework. Despite the complexity of the context of a humanitarian crisis, this framework allows for a surprisingly straightforward deduction of feasible strategies to improve coordination. Finally, the framework is applied and tested, using several cases of coordination in the ongoing humanitarian crisis of Sudan's Darfur region.