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Purpose Due to the rapid surge in the number of COVID-19 cases in India, the health-care supply chain (HCSC) disruptions and uncertainties have increased manifold posing severe challenges to health-care facilities and significantly hampering the functioning of the health industry. This study aims to propose a hierarchical structural model of enablers of HCSC in the COVID-19 outbreak and identifies inter-relationships among them in the health-care market. Design/methodology/approach Enablers of emergency HCSC have been identified through extensive literature review and experts’ opinions. Subsequently, total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) and cross-impact matrix-multiplication (MICMAC) analysis have been implemented to determine the hierarchical inter-relationships among enablers and classify them according to their contribution to the overall system. Findings The research has identified and validated 15 enablers of the emergency supply chain in health-care businesses. The study resulted in a seven-level hierarchical structural model based on enabler’s driving and dependence powers. Further, the application of MICMAC analysis resulted in the classification of enablers into four groups, namely, autonomous, dependent, linkage and independent group. Research limitations/implications This study would help health professionals, policymakers and academia to implement the theoretical model constructed to alleviate the effect of COVID-19 by improving the HCSC performances in pandemic situations. This study has social and economic implications in terms of cost-effective and efficient delivery of care services in health emergencies. Originality/value The proposed theoretical model constructed is a new effort addressing the issues of HCSC in the COVID-19 crisis. Procedural implementation of TISM and MICMAC analysis in this study would help researchers to grasp concepts in a very lucid manner. The present study is one of the very few studies analyzing enablers in pandemic situations by implementing the TISM approach.

The pre-positioning problem is an important part of emergency supply. Pre-positioning decisions must be made before disasters occur under high uncertainty and only limited distribution information. This study proposes a distributionally robust optimization model for the multi-period dynamic pre-positioning of emergency supplies with a static pre-disaster phase and a dynamic post-disaster phase. In the post-disaster phase, the uncertain demands are time varying and have partial distribution information that belongs to a given family of distributions. The family of distributions is described by a given perturbation set based on historical information. Therefore, the proposed model forms a semi-infinite programming problem with ambiguous chance constraints, which typically would be computationally intractable. We refine the bounded perturbation sets (box, box-ball and box-polyhedral) and develop computationally tractable safe approximations of the chance constraints. Finally, a realistic application to the Circum-Bohai Sea Region of China is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the robust optimization model.

Emergency medical oxygen cylinders are commonly used as first aid kits to prevent strokes during chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) / asthma attacks. In this paper, we propose a geolocation-aware mobile crowdsourcing solution for the emergency supply of oxygen cylinders to patients suffering from sudden breathing difficulties. The proposed crowdsourcing solution leverages the proliferation of mobile devices to connect requestors of emergency oxygen cylinders with potential suppliers from the crowd during crises. We describe the design process of the system, its technical implementation details, and key features. We also discuss some of the encountered challenges and summarize the actions taken to address them.

In emergency logistics, it is important to allocate available assets to operations effectively due to the resource scarcity. This paper considers a supply chain network which includes local and glo...

This paper analyzes the emergency in China's fujian province in response to the outbreak of the main problems in the supply chain operation and difficulties, through the investigation of both for many times, discusses how to on the basis of the existing cloud computing platform, using block chain technology, raise the emergency of the fujian province and even the whole of China supply chain management efficiency of the technical solution. This paper focuses on research on technology innovation of emergency supply chain management based on blockchain Technology. After thorough investigation and analysis, the research group put forward several feasible schemes.

Traffic congestion is one key factor that delays emergency supply logistics after disasters, but it is seldom explicitly considered in previous emergency supply planning models. To fill the...

Nowadays we can see an increase of emergency and crisis. One of these may be a power outage. However, this can also be a cascade effect because of the windshield. Hospitals are a critical infrastructure sector where it is essential to ensure a constant supply of electricity. At the time of the power outage aggregates are used for which it is necessary to provide the supply of fuel. Each hospital has different stocks of fuel and therefore needs emergency supplies of this raw material. For this purpose, an assessment system is proposed for hospitals, but also for regions, which would determine the current state of fuel availability in hospitals in the area. The aim of this paper is to introduce an assessment system for providing emergency supplies of fuel deliveries to hospitals in the event of a power outage. The paper will address hospital capacities regarding fuel stocks in the event of an outage. In the next part, the analysis of selected hospitals and their subsequent comparison will be carried out. Furthermore, the area of emergency fuel supplies for hospitals will be addressed. At the end of the paper, an assessment system will be designed to ensure the delivery of emergency fuel supplies. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V., Internal grant agency of Tomas Bata University in Zlin [IGA/FAI/2019/001]; Depatrment of Security Engeneering, Faculty of Applied Informatics

The COVID-19 pandemic now affects the entire world and has many major effects on the global economy, environment, health, and society. Focusing on the harm COVID-19 poses for human health and society, this study used system dynamics to establish a prevention and control model that combines material supply, public opinion dissemination, public awareness, scientific and technological research, staggered work shifts, and the warning effect (of law/policy). Causal loop analysis was used to identify interactions between subsystems and explore the key factors affecting social benefit. Further, different scenarios were dynamically simulated to explore optimal combination modes. The main findings were as follows: (1) The low supervision mode will produce a lag effect and superimposed effect on material supply and impede social benefit. (2) The strong supervision mode has multiple performances; it can reduce online public opinion dissemination and the rate of concealment and false declaration and improve government credibility and social benefit. However, a fading effect will appear in the middle and late periods, and over time, the effect of strong supervision will gradually weaken (but occasionally rebound) and thus require adjustment. These findings can provide a theoretical basis for improving epidemic prevention and control measures.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has hugely disrupted supply chains (SCs) in different sectors globally. The global demand for many essential items (e.g., facemasks, food products) has been phenomenal, resulting in supply failure. SCs could not keep up with the shortage of raw materials, and manufacturing firms could not ramp up their production capacity to meet these unparalleled demand levels. This study aimed to examine a set of congruent strategies and recovery plans to minimize the cost and maximize the availability of essential items to respond to global SC disruptions. We used facemask SCs as an example and simulated the current state of its supply and demand using the agent-based modeling method. We proposed two main recovery strategies relevant to building emergency supply and extra manufacturing capacity to mitigate SC disruptions. Our findings revealed that minimizing the risk response time and maximizing the production capacity helped essential item manufacturers meet consumers’ skyrocketing demands and timely supply to consumers, reducing financial shocks to firms. Our study suggested that delayed implementation of the proposed recovery strategies could lead to supply, demand, and financial shocks for essential item manufacturers. This study scrutinized strategies to mitigate the demand–supply crisis of essential items. It further proposed congruent strategies and recovery plans to alleviate the problem in the exceptional disruptive event caused by COVID-19.

Due to the unexpected and irresistible consequences of sudden disasters, the relevant government departments need to respond quickly when disasters occur, and then coordinate a large number of emergency treatment materials and emergency living materials. Emergency supply chain is a dynamic material supply and demand network, which is deployed around the government emergency management center and takes time efficiency as the core goal. With the support of various social forces, China's emergency supply chain has withstood the test and exposed many problems. The epidemic is not over, so it is urgent to summarize experience and build a more optimized and scientific emergency supply chain strategy.

It is common that many roads in disaster areas are damaged and obstructed after sudden-onset disasters. The phenomenon often comes with escalated traffic deterioration that raises the time and cost of emergency supply scheduling. Fortunately, repairing road network will shorten the time of in-transit distribution. In this paper, according to the characteristics of emergency supplies distribution, an emergency supply scheduling model based on multiple warehouses and stricken locations is constructed to deal with the failure of part of road networks in the early postdisaster phase. The detailed process is as follows. When part of the road networks fail, we firstly determine whether to repair the damaged road networks, and then a model of reliable emergency supply scheduling based on bi-level programming is proposed. Subsequently, an improved artificial bee colony algorithm is presented to solve the problem mentioned above. Finally, through a case study, the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed model and algorithm are verified.

This study has addressed and identified the problems in managing the existing emergency supply chain of Bangladesh in all phases of operation in terms of the primary drivers of the supply chain. It has also attempted to conceptualize and suggest an effective emergency supply chain. In this context, a thorough field investigation in several districts was conducted among the employees of the organizations sharing common information with similar protocols and implications (interoperable). Information was collected from the employees of all the participating organizations involved in disaster management through a semi-structured questionnaire based survey. The respondents addressed and illustrated several interconnected reasons which are inhibiting proper forecasting, procurement, storage, identification of affected people, and distribution. The respondents pointed out that the mismatching of objectives in the different organizations resulted in non-interoperability among the participating organizations. These issues are related to the malfunctioning of management with multidimensional organizational conflicts. Reflecting those issues, an emergency supply chain for disaster management is proposed in this study.

In the process of food emergency supply chain logistics inventory and pick up, in order to improve the entry efficiency and accuracy of incoming items, EPC Internet of Things system can be used to manage items. This paper first briefly introduces EPC and analyzes the application of EPC in logistics for readers’ reference.

The publication deals with selected issues related to planning and ensuring the evacuation of the population from the area threatened by the consequences of the crisis phenomenon. It deals with the idea of emergency supply evacuated the population in terms of transport security and it possibility at the choice of a suitable method of transport of food for evacuees people. The main idea is to create the optimal model of the supply the population with basic foodstuffs. For optimum supply it is necessary to specify the possible.

We study a problem faced by a service provider, who is responsible for the repair of a group of assets subject to random failures. In case of a failure, both an engineer and a spare part of the right kind need to be available to carry out the repair. A limited number of engineers are employed while also stocks of the various spare parts are limited. In case any resource (engineer or spare part) is not immediately available, the service provider may follow a full backlogging policy. Alternatively, in case of spare parts stock out, he has the option to revert to an emergency supplier with ample capacity of resources. We present an original model to analyze the problem dynamics between this service provider and the emergency supplier. Especially, we determine the optimal emergency shipment cost and the optimal multi-resource level of the service provider. To this end, we propose a computationally efficient algorithm to find the Stackelberg equilibrium. Furthermore, we design a revenue-sharing cooperative contract between these players which always results in coordination. Finally, we examine the risk of uncertainties in such a contract and find the optimal contract parameters by considering the utility functions of the players.

The fundamental problem of the emergency repair and construction is to evaluate the efficiency of the support plan of emergency supply for earthquake repair. This paper constructs reasonable evaluation model of each support plans' input and output based on DEA and gets the relative efficiency of each support plans to choose the rational plan. When fuzzy DEA can not evaluate the efficiency of support plans in the special case which is after the earthquake and the outputs are fuzzy data, it can get average efficiency by using Monte-Carlo method to simulate the outputs of each support plan and provide decision makers with scientific basis for choosing the rational support plan.

Natural calamities and famine are recurring phenomena in Africa. Millions have perished and millions more have suffered, mainly because governments lack the capacity to detect and prevent catastrophes or mitigate their effects. Ethiopia is one of the very few countries that has developed a disaster response mechanism since the 1974 famine. More than 200,000 people died as a result of the 1972-1974 drought and famine, and more than 1 million people perished during the 1984-1983 famine. The Ethiopian famine moved the conscience of people to a degree that no other crisis in memory can match; as a result, international involvement was considerable. Effective famine prevention or relief is inconceivable in the absence of an adequate food security reserve especially earmarked for emergency supply. The activities of the early warning system therefore focus on the major indicators that determine food availability in the several food supply systems.

In this paper, we describe the use of the simulation software for emergency supply transport to the hospital. The paper is divided into a few parts. Firstly, there is the introduction to the transport and short history about it. Secondly, there is describe the transport infrastructure in the Czech Republic. The central part of the paper presents simulation software for the transport. In this part was selected simulation software PTV Vissim. Based on this software we use the simulation of the emergency supply to the selected hospital in the Czech Republic. Finally, there are conclusion and recommendation from this area.

Drinking water supply is at the core of both, humanitarian action in times of crisis, as well as national policies for regular and emergency supply. In countries with a continuous water supply, the population mostly relies ingenuously on the permanent availability of tap water due to high supply standards. In case of a disruption in the drinking water infrastructure, minimum supply standards become important for emergency management during disasters. However, wider recognition of this issue is still lacking, particularly in countries facing comparably fewer disruptions. Several international agencies provide guideline values for minimum water provision standards in case of a disaster. Acknowledging that these minimum standards were developed for humanitarian assistance, it remains to be analyzed whether these standards apply to disaster management in countries with high supply standards. Based on a comprehensive literature review of scientific publications and humanitarian guidelines, as well as policies from selected countries, current processes, contents, and shortcomings of emergency water supply planning are assessed. To close the identified gaps, this paper flags potential improvements for emergency water supply planning and identifies future fields of research.

The More Doctors Program is a strategic set of actions for the Brazilian National Health System (SUS) aiming at improvements in medical education, professional qualification and retention of doctors in unassisted areas. Among these actions, we highlight the Project More Doctors for Brazil (PMMB), responsible for the emergency supply of doctors. It was conceived as a response to the shortage of professionals in primary care across the country, an extremely important aspect in this set of strategies for SUS. The professional improvement proposed by PMMB has mobilized public higher education institutions to participate as supervisory institutions. They are responsible for supervising the activities developed by doctors and for strengthening the continuing education policy through teaching-service integration actions. This article aims to report on the experience of managing academic supervision in light of the challenge of the implementation of PMMB.

O Programa Mais Médicos (PMM) possui três eixos de atuação e é fundamentado pelas diretrizes pedagógicas da Educação Permanente. Considerando a abrangência do programa, que vai do provimento emergencial de médicos até a ampliação do número de vagas em cursos de graduação e residência em Medicina, sua gestão é interministerial, na qual o Ministério da Saúde (MS) e o Ministério da Educação (MEC) compartilham responsabilidades para seu pleno funcionamento. O presente trabalho relata a construção da experiência de gestão do PMM por parte do MEC, que inclui a estruturação de uma nova diretoria e de novos modos de fazer gestão nesse ministério. Também aponta as principais dificuldades e facilidades durante todo o processo, além de sinalizar importantes reflexões sobre as perspectivas e desafios para a continuidade e sustentabilidade do programa. The More Doctors Program (PMM) has three axes of action and is grounded on the pedagogical guidelines of Permanent Education. Considering the Program’s scope, which ranges from the emergency supply of doctors to the expansion of the number of seats in undergraduate and medical residency courses, its management is interministerial, as the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education share responsibilities for its full operation. This article reports on the construction of the Ministry of Education’s experience of managing PMM, which includes the structuring of a new Directorate and new ways of doing management in this Ministry. It also points out the main difficulties and facilities throughout the process, and reflects on the perspectives and challenges for the Program’s continuity and sustainability. El Programa Más Médicos (PMM) posee tres ejes de actuación y está fundamentado por las directrices pedagógicas de la Educación Permanente. En el marco del Programa, que va desde la provisión de emergencia de médicos hasta la ampliación del número de plazas en cursos de graduación y residencia en Medicina, su gestión es interministerial, en donde el Ministerio de Salud (MS) y el Ministerio de Educación (MEC) comparten responsabilidades para su pleno funcionamiento. El presente trabajo relata la construcción de la experiencia de gestión del PMM por parte del MEC, que incluye la estructuración de una nueva Dirección y de nuevos modos de realizar la gestión en este Ministerio. También señala las principales dificultades y facilidades durante todo el proceso, además de mostrar importantes reflexiones sobre las perspectivas y desafíos para la continuidad y sostenibilidad del Programa.

The sudden and frequent natural disasters have brought a series of damages to both the economy and society of all countries in the world and made people to suffer a double loss of life and property. In this context, it raises a claim for emergency rescue activities in terms of more scientific, more accurate and quicker responses. Emergency rescue is taken as one of the most important ways to save lives and reduce losses when natural disasters attack; while proper emergency supply storage facility location is the key to guarantee the effectiveness and efficiency of emergency rescue operations. Based on the characteristics of emergency rescue activities, this paper analyzes the scientific problems in the field of emergency rescue and summarizes the current progress of emergency supply facility location modeling and algorithms with the purpose of laying a theoretical foundation for the future research.

After the Internet of Things was proposed and implemented in the network, the application of this technique has created a lot of fresh techniques and conveniences for various aspects of our life and work. In terms of life, the application skills of EPC Internet of Things have also received attention from all aspects of urban life[1]. It is also honored to be the source of the forces that can promote the economic development of the new generation. In recent years, the continuous implementation of the planned urbanization process in our country has led to an extremely rapid increase in the amount of urban household garbage related to daily necessities produced by residents in the city. The accumulation of various garbage will not only pose a very serious threat to the ecological environment of our lives, it will also have a negative impact on the health of the residents living in the city. Experts believe that the EPC Internet of Things combined with supply chain management is the best and most cost-effective solution to deal with domestic waste.

The aim of this paper is to explore a new model to extinguish fire without much human effort. There has been a renewed and sustained interest towards safety in both public and private sectors. During the year 2016, 3,515 people died by fire or fire related injuries in the USA alone. The total estimated economic value of fire related damages in 2017 exceeds $300 billion. Industries are the most possible places of fire accident particularly those related to chemical/hydrocarbon manufacturing and or processing. An advanced autonomous fire extinguishing system can combat fire accidents and minimize damage to both human lives and property without exposing fire fighters to additional risks. The proposed robot can autonomously detect and extinguish fire before it spreads. The robot can, without any human input, navigate through hallways or corridors of any complexity, even places unreachable by a human, to reach the origin of the fire before it is allowed to spread further. The robot can automatically recognize and avoid obstacles to reach its destination. The robot, therefore, can not only be used to effectively fight fire but can also be deployed to assist in search and rescue operations at natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other geologic processes. It can also be utilized to carry up to 1kg of equipment or emergency supply to hard to reach places. Its camera view can be live streamed, and if needed controlled by an authorized personal using a smartphone from a safe place through its wireless capabilities.

In 2020, the novel coronavirus pneumonia spread and raged around the world as a major unconventional emergency. The emergency supply chain management, which was not noticed by people, began to enter the vision of decision-makers. Novel coronavirus pneumonia is a key part of the new crown pneumonia epidemic. Jingdong, for example, illustrates how Jingdong constructs its emergency supply chain, with a view to providing some suggestions and references for the emergency supply chain to improve the urgent supply chain management.

Effective control of an infectious disease outbreak calls not only for a rapid response but also for the establishment of an emergency supply chain. During the control effort, huge amounts of medic...

For governments and nonprofit organizations such as the Red Cross, charity federation, through the contract form emergency relief materials reserve not for profit, but to cope with the future the possibility of natural disasters and public health events, the occurrence of natural disasters and public health events has great uncertainty, which makes the demand for emergency relief supplies have great randomness. On the basis of predecessors’ research, according to the use of options in the theory of supply chain coordination, to build the mathematical model based on option contract, research shows that option contracts can be achieved under the conditional value at risk of emergency relief supply chain coordination, in order to improve the effectiveness of emergency relief supply chain, with the increase of Co option purchase price, the government will increase by option order quantity q**, Q** way to reduce the initial order quantity q reduce material procurement cost; When the option purchase price Co is fixed, the supplier’s risk aversion increases with the decrease of the risk preference coefficient. In this case, the government, as the purchaser, needs to provide a higher option strike price Ce to encourage the supplier to produce according to the optimal output of the supply chain system.