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must meet the immediate needs of those affected and will include items such as food,
medicine, tents, sanitation equipment, tools and related necessities [5].
Considering the problem of preparing for a disaster, Somalia is suffering severely
due to poverty, famine and the strongholds of the terrorist group, al-Shabaab. Somalia
is in urgent need of humanitarian aid and is therefore considered as the case study for
this work. The existing disasters for Somalia are identified as well as the associated
inventory which would be necessary for survival.
1.2
Somalia as a Case Study
Since the spring in 2011, Somalia experienced a drought which is considered to be the
worst in 60 years [6]. The country has suffered from crop failure, an extreme rise in
food prices, as well as the grip of al-Shabaab on central and South Somalia. These
factors have forced the United Nations (UN) to declare famine in six areas of Soma-
lia. These areas have currently been reduced to three areas due to the assistance of
humanitarian organizations over the past few years. The increase in assistance, how-
ever, has been insufficient as there are still 3.7 million victims in need of emergency
assistance and 250,000 in danger of dying. The famine has compelled thousands of
victims to move to overfull refugee camps in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti, while
other victims have fled to Internally Displaced Persons camps in Mogadishu [6]. The
United States, UN, and international humanitarian organizations have been trying to
address the immediate needs of the victims in Somalia [6].
The unfortunate circumstances leaves Somalia in need of a more permanent solu-
tion, i.e., more research should be done so that adequate solutions are obtained and
facilities should be pre-positioned in disaster areas with a sufficient supply of relief
aid. This study is based on the formulation of mathematical modeling as a means to
determine the quantities of aid supplies at a pre-positioning facility within Somalia.
Preemptive multi-objective programming is employed to ensure that areas will be
supplied with immediate disaster relief.
The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows: A literature review ad-
dresses the problem variants associated with disaster relief and existing models that
have been developed to accommodate these areas. The research methodology presents
the formulated model. The model results and the findings are then discussed, followed
by some conclusions and future research developments.
2
Literature Review
2.1
Problem Variants
Considerable literature has addressed the management of disaster relief organizations.
Much of this deals with the social and organizational implications of responding to
disasters in many parts of the world, including countries with poor infrastructure
and/or may be involved in hostilities. Blecken et al. [7] state that even though re-
search contributions to supply chain management in the context of humanitarian
