**1.1 Disaster and relief**

Natural disasters pose a great threat to human lives and property in all aspects. The frequency, intensity, and severity of disasters, are in a fast-growing trend year by year. According to the World Disasters Report (2018) of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), a decade's number of 3751 disasters triggered by natural hazards had affected 2 billion people and estimated \$1658 billion cost of damages. Floods, earthquakes, storms, tsunamis, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, and landslides are on the list of most common natural disasters over the last ten years (2008–2017). Some of them occur frequently in a year, such as floods (average 152) and storms (average 101), while some are not that frequent but extremely deadly, such as earthquakes (average 30) that caused 351,968 deaths and some 49% of the total [1]. There has been a big increase in the number of responses to disasters this decade. Alone with this situation, a large amount of disaster rescue and relief supplies has experienced tremendous growth, particularly in those major disasters such as forest fire, earthquake, typhoon, and floods.

Disaster relief supplies (DRS), including life necessities (e.g., food and drinks), living security items (e.g., clothes and shelters), medical supplies (e.g., medicines and healthcare products), and life-saving tools and equipment (digging tools, emergency lights, and large equipment), in response to disasters and crisis, play critical roles in saving lives and reconstructing communities in all recovering stages. Different supplies have different characteristics in terms of material lifetime and demand urgency and therefore need different management mechanisms. First, the demand for DRS is unpredictable due to the unexpected event at unexpected locations in most of the situations. Second, the amount, type, and emergency of demand are highly uncertain due to the different damage levels and geographic conditions. Third, the timely efficiency of the availability and delivery of DRS is extremely important in the relief process. Lastly, the demand and supply of these materials and equipment are mandatory and have strong social value. Furthermore, due to the low economic or market value of DRS, government agencies are responsible for the collection, purchasing, storing, delivery, and coordination of materials most of the time and situations.

#### **1.2 Disaster relief supply management**

DRS have different properties and thus are normally stored and managed in different ways. Under the central government regulations, there are typically two different management DRS management systems, centralized or decentralized, covering a country [2]. In a centralized system, such as that in China, DRS are properly arranged in different governmental levels and integrated by the central government level. A decentralized system, such as that in the US, DRS are physically handled at the state level.

In terms of material items, different supplies are held in different places. The immediate life necessities and living security items, including food, drink, basic digging tools, and simple clothes and shelters are normally stored in grassroots level facilities. These materials are of low value but have crucial importance in the initial rescuing period. Medical supplies, including medicines, dressing, first aids, surgical supports, are kept in the local hospitals and clinics. These supplies are vital in the first few days of life-saving and pain relief and need to be available in time. Other expensive medicines, surgical equipment, and special tools are available, and most of them are in actual daily uses, in large hospitals in large towns and cities. Large life-saving mechanical tools, equipment, and transportation modes are stored in the main facilities. These storages are all integrated into a largely complete network covering a whole region or a country.

Because of the uncertainty and emergency of disaster events, the demand for DRS usually cannot be satisfied by the prepositioned supplies in almost all cases. In these situations, private sectors, including non-government organizations (NGO), industrial organizations, and international organizations, collect and coordinate a large number of supplies. These supplies are planned and prepared by government agencies or obtained from all aspects of donations with various types, different amounts, and diversified conditions. They could be stored in anywhere of the country, nearby or far away. To properly manage these supplies is never an easy and simple task.

#### **1.3 Management issues**

Since the DRS are of much different market values, high uncertainty of demand time and amount, and involve multiple operations players, following management issues are frequently observed in rescue and relief practices.

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and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.

*Disaster Relief Supply Management*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94008*

1.The basic DRS of living necessities and first hand rescuing tools stored in the first line local warehouses are of low market value. They are prepared by government agencies and managed by grassroots staff. These people only obtain some basic training and spend a very limited time on material management. This implies that the daily management operations are not in a professional and even a bureaucratic manner. For instance, tons of bags of rice and flour were found expired and deteriorated in the warehouses of some affected towns several years after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake due to the lack of regular monitory and management. It is hard to have these grassroots organizations efficiently coordinated with other organizations to provide support for the first time.

2.The time efficiency of disaster relief operations is extremely important, but the operations capability is usually very limited, particularly in those suddenonset disasters such as earthquakes, forest fires, or tsunami. The 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China lasted for less than a few minutes but took away around 70,000 lives, hundreds of thousands injured and a million houses crashed. Even it is possible to forecast some disasters such as typhoons and hurricanes, the precise information about the development and impact levels are hard to be obtained. Therefore, it is difficult to prepare the time availability of DRS.

3.The high uncertainties of disaster determine that the information about the timing, location, damage assessment, relief demand, and resource availability is limited, inaccurate, hysteretic, and even confusing. Besides, the demand is ever-changing due to the changing disaster environment, such as secondary disasters and volunteer coordination. Within 48 hours after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 China, the number of rescue workers and volunteers surging into the earthquake centre town was four times more than the affected residents. Heavy rains and continuous aftershocks largely accelerated the running out of food and water. Also, broken infrastructure, limited professional manpower, poor communication, weak coordination, and unanticipated natural

conditions together make the resource allocation extremely difficult.

4.Multiple relief sectors are always involved with complex coordination issues, particularly in the large natural disaster. Disaster relief operations involve thousands of converging supply chains to be coordinated in the rescuing and relief processes. However, it is often observed that these participants are too smart to be coordinated but want to be the coordinator. Many volunteers are keen to work in the sites exposed by major media, while the urgent needs in corners are often overlooked. Inefficiencies, duplications, and overlap in the management of DRS in the sites are frequently caused by poor information communication, unprofessional operations, or even language understanding. Furthermore, the scarcity of resources also poses inevitable allocation guideline issues about racial, class, ethical, and moral implications [3]. Furthermore, it is often confusing in rules, regulations, and other legal issues about social welfare in a life and death situation [4]. Poor coordination reduces the delivery time efficiency, pushes up the inventory and transportation cost, and results in huge economic and environmental waste. The phenomena are witnessed in almost all disasters like the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the 2010 Haiti earthquake,

5.A disaster, such as an earthquake, flood, or tsunami, occurs once for years, without any regular pattern or warning signal. But once it happens, particularly in the early response periods, a large number of people and money are
