A Systematic Literature Review on Mathematical Models of Humanitarian Logistics

Abstract

Humanitarian logistics (HL) is considered one of the most significant issues of disaster operations and management. Thus, HL operation should be viable enough to function well under the uncertain and complex nature of the disaster. Many difficulties in pre-and post-disaster phases bring both human and economic losses. Therefore, it is essential to make sure that the HL operations are designed efficiently. In the last two decades, several publications have emphasized efficient HL operations and proposed several mathematical models and algorithms to increase the efficiency of HL operations and motivated the necessity of a systematic literature review. A systematic literature review is deemed pertinent due to its transparent and detailed article searching procedure. In this study, due to the importance of the mathematical optimization model, we reviewed more than one hundred articles published between 2000 and 2020 to investigate the optimization models in the field of HL. We classified the optimization models into three main problems: facility location problems, relief distribution, and mass evacuation where each of the classified areas includes both deterministic and non-deterministic models.