Information Categories for Infrastructure and Logistic Resource Assessments in Humanitarian Logistics

Abstract

Humanitarian logistics assessment aims at quickly gathering accurate information about a disaster-affected area. This includes information about the infrastructure and logistic resources which are required to execute a humanitarian operation. Assessment thus provides a decision basis, e.g. to plan aid deliveries. Despite its relevance, assessment has hardly been researched. This paper structures practical knowledge and makes it accessible to the research community. Accordingly, it is based on documents from practice, exploring assessment tools and guidelines of humanitarian aid organizations regarding infrastructure and logistic resources. Furthermore, it structures the knowledge contained in them. Inductive Category Development, a qualitative research approach, is used to split the documents into comparable information fragments. On that foundation, we consider three assessment phases: preparedness, rapid response and on-going response. We give an example to illustrate which information to assess during each phase and explain how the assessments in these phases are connected. The findings provide a foundation for developing comprehensive theories on infrastructure and logistic resource assessments, as well as impulses for humanitarian aid organizations to standardize their assessment tools. The standardization can increase the speed of assessment and facilitates information sharing between organizations.