0000000001043163
AUTHOR
Mohammad Tafiqur Rahman
Understanding Decision Support in Large-Scale Disasters: Challenges in Humanitarian Logistics Distribution
Disasters are characterized by conflicting, uncertain, or lacking data. Nevertheless, humanitarian responders need to make rapid decisions. This is particularly true for the immediate response to a sudden onset disaster. Since most humanitarian decision support systems (DSS) make important assumptions on data availability and quality that are often not fulfilled in practice, decision-makers are largely left to their experience. In this paper, we identify three major challenges for an operational DSS to support distribution planning: (i) deep uncertainty; (ii) reflecting field conditions and constraints; and (iii) rapid humanitarian logistics modeling. We review the relevant theories and pro…
Making decisions for effective humanitarian actions: a conceptual framework for relief distribution
AbstractResponding to a disaster encompasses a myriad of humanitarian actions; the ultimate and crucial is immediate relief distribution. Making effective decisions in chaotic disaster environment is always complex and challenging. Decisions made here are heavily influenced by the decisions made in several related problem areas such as facility locations, relief supply chain, transportation, scheduling, and inventory management. While each of these problem areas has its own set of decision factors, several of these factors are also common in multiple problem areas. These common decision factors offer both an opportunity and a challenge. The challenge is to balance the relative importance of…
Requirements for Relief Distribution Decision-Making in Humanitarian Logistics
Making efficient and effective decisions in the chaotic environment of humanitarian relief distribution (HRD) is challenging. Decision-makers need to concentrate on numerous decision factors categorized into decision objectives, variables, and constraints. Recent HRD literature focuses on optimizing procedures while neglecting the quantification of essential requirements (decision factors) for information systems to provide decision-making support. In this article, we address this gap by accumulating affecting decision factors from both literature and practice. We investigated the practical implications of these factors in HRD decision-making by measuring the preferences of a Delphi panel c…
Control of the speed of a DC motor by employeeing pulse width modulation (PWM) technique
This paper is mainly focused on the technique of pulse width modulation for controlling the speed of a 12 volt DC motor more efficiently. A potentiometer was used to generate a wide variety of pulses. The output of the controlling circuit (Pulse Width) was connected to the second circuit as input for direction control. Here a single push switch was used to change the state (stopforward-stop-reverse) of the DC motor. These two circuits were combined into one for ease of use. Third circuit was designed to measure the speed of the motor by employing an opto-electronic sensor, an amplifier and a two blade fan to interrupt the signal transmission of the sensor. Finally, the output of the sensor …
Additional file 1 of Making decisions for effective humanitarian actions: a conceptual framework for relief distribution
Additional file 1.
Deep uncertainty in humanitarian logistics operations: decision-making challenges in responding to large-scale natural disasters
Humanitarian logistics operations perform challenging tasks while responding to large-scale natural disasters. Decision makers at different stages of humanitarian operations exploit numerous problem-specific decision-making models or tools. When synchronising the outputs (decisions) from models into a unified solution, the situation becomes critical because of the lack of consensus on objectives and the availability of model alternatives with uncertainty in the models' key parameters and evaluation of the models' alternative outcomes. Thus, the operational environment becomes complex to respond urgently to humanitarian needs and makes the situation deeply uncertain. In this paper, we inspec…
Supporting Humanitarian Relief Distribution Decision-Making under Deep Uncertainty : A System Design Approach
With respect to copyright, all the papers were excluded from the dissertation. Disasters threaten society with widespread destruction of infrastructure and livelihood. For their survival, affected inhabitants depend on immediate humanitarian assistance from diverse organizations. During quick responses, humanitarian decision- makers (HDMs) act rapidly to distribute necessary relief goods, despite the deep, prevailing uncertainty that arises from scarce, conflicting, and uncertain information. To support HDMs in humanitarian relief distribution (HRD) decision-making, humanitarian logistics (HL) researchers have developed various mathematical models. These models are, however, specific to dis…
Pragmatism in Decision Support System Research
Decision making on relief distribution is a complex multidisciplinary task in humanitarian logistics. It incorporates decision makers from different but related problem areas. The failure to perform assigned decision-making tasks in any area makes the entire system unstable and delays the relief distribution process. An organized, well-planned, and practical decision support system (DSS) can assist practitioners in making rapid decisions on delivering relief items. Hence, DSS researchers in humanitarian logistics require rigorous thinking, close and critical analysis, and the identification of challenges to conduct research or validate the generated knowledge properly. To perform such compl…