Research on Disaster Relief Operations; A case of the Great East Japan Earthquake.

The Great East Japan Earthquake hit the north-eastern parts of Japan on March 11, 2011. A shortage of relief supplies for many affected people just after the occurrence of the disaster caused an increased loss of lives. One of the most important issues in disaster relief operations (DROs) to deliver relief supplies is the supply chain management (SCM) approach. To date, there have been some studies on SCM for DROs, but there are very few papers in the literature which investigate the situation of damaged infrastructure and lack of information about the demand of relief supplies at the time a disaster occurs. In this paper, we examine how DROs in the Great East Japan Earthquake were performed in terms of the principles, which were required for the design of SCM for DROs by applying quantification method 3. We also discuss whether the DROs for the earthquake were appropriate or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]