This Paper was amongst top-10 winning entries in "Opsyrus 2006", the CoolAvenues.com - OIG (IIM Lucknow) Paper Writing Competition held during Oct-Dec 2006.

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Executive Summary

'A disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of society, causing widespread human, material or environmental losses which exceed the ability of affected society to cope on its own resources.'

- Source: UNDHA 2001

In the last decade the number of people who lost their lives in disasters stood at an average figure of 62,000 per year. The average number of disaster affected people each year during the last decade is a colossal 300 million. In the same period in India, an average of about 4344 people lost their lives and about 30 million people were affected by disasters. The sheer scope of the socioeconomic impacts of disasters, natural as well as technological, has brought about a shift in the approach to dealing with the concept of risk in modern societies.

The increase in frequency of disasters and the exponential growth in the economic costs of disaster have stirred up research in counteracting disasters with greater effectiveness. But such an effort must be multi disciplinary and hence the spurt in interest in how advancements in supply chain management can more effectively tackle a disaster. Governments all over the world have been funding research in this direction. This paper makes an effort to bring together a comprehensive yet generic supply chain oriented approach to control and manage a disaster.

We propose a three phased approach,

1. Prevention / Mitigation: To eliminate or minimize the disaster
2. Response (Short Term): Activities that follow the initial impact of a disaster
3. Recovery (Long Term): Activities that continue until all systems return to normalcy

The paper lays more emphasis on the second phase which is where the effect of supply chain is maximal.

In the first phase we design the supply chain and locate the facilities along it using a modified set covering model. This chain can be catapulted into action at a very short notice.

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* Contributed by: -
Uday Sankar A. & S. Yogendra,
National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai.