Transportation and vehicle fleet management in humanitarian logistics: challenges for future research

Abstract

Transportation and vehicle fleet management in humanitarian logistics have characteristics virtually unexplored by OR researchers. We provide evidence-based insights into the logistics challenges imposed by the dual objective of relief and development, decentralization, earmarked funding, and field operating conditions. We comment on why these characteristics help explaining the persistence of aging fleets, excessive fleet sizes, low fleet standardization, and service delays: problems humanitarian fleet managers fight on a daily basis to improve their service levels. We propose avenues for future research to address strategic, tactical, and operational challenges derived from the defining characteristics of humanitarian logistics discussed in the paper.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 50 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.