Thanks to the USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society!

This past Wednesday, I had the pleasure of being the first speaker in the virtual seminar series organized by the University of Southern California's Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society (CAIS).  The title of my presentation was, "Game Theory Network Models for Disaster Relief," and my host was Professor Phebe Vayanos!

The talk was well advertised and it was a pleasure and delight to have participants viewing my presentation even from Mexico and India! It was very thoughtful for CAIS to open up the virtual seminar to the public. Terrific that also students and colleagues from UMass Amherst could view it.

The organizers of this series have posted the video recording on youtube, so that additional folks that are interested can see it:

Dr. Vayanos did a great job moderating the Q&A component of the seminar after my presentation. The questions and discussions were terrific! The slide deck of this talk has been posted on the Virtual Center for Supernetworks website at the Isenberg School of Management. 

And, luckily, we managed to conduct this event when we did, since two hours afterwards, we lost electric power due to a fierce windstorm that struck Massachusetts. We were without electric power and, hence, without Wi Fi, for 30 hours, signifying further the importance of research and practice surrounding all phases of disaster management, from preparedness and mitigation to response and recovery. Some of our neighbors are still without power and a neighbor was trapped in his car for 4 hours with trees and downed power lines in front and behind his vehicle. And, yesterday morning, we saw the Town of Amherst crew taking down with great skill an ailing tree so that it, too, would not fall and disrupt electricity and communications!

Emergency Logistics: A Speaker who Inspired

Today we had the distinct privilege and honor of hosting Professor Jose Holquin-Veras of RPI in Troy, New York, who delivered the talk, Emergency Logistics Issues Impacting the Response to KATRINA: What Went Wrong? What Could we do to Avoid a Repeat? as part of the UMass Amherst Fall 2009 INFORMS Speaker Series. Professor Holquin-Veras arrived in time for the special reception that the Student Chapter that helps me to organize this series had prepared to celebrate its summa cum laude award which it received in San Diego on October 13, 2009. Before his presentation, which took place today at 11AM at the Isenberg School of Management, he chatted with the chapter officers and the guests who had come to the reception.

It was wonderful to have faculty and students, both undergraduate and graduate, not only from the Isenberg School, but also from the College of Engineering as well as from the Department of Economics in attendance. There were also guests from the community. I always say that if one has an outstanding speaker talking on a fascinating subject, the room will fill up, and Professor Holquin-Veras was simply terrific!

He shared with us his on-site experiences and knowledge gleaned from numerous interviews as well as data analysis on the disaster that was Katrina as well as on the second-tier disaster that followed with the material convergence. He spoke about the complete lack of emergency preparedness at local, regional, and national levels, and how Walmart, luckily, had identified the pending humanitarian disaster and had relayed trucks with supplies. We learned that 40 commodities are essential and how important it is to develop models for humanitarian logistics that identify the appropriate objective function to optimize, which he stated could be done with economic valuation to capture the social costs that should be minimized (and the associated suffering). Humanitarian logistics operations and supply chains are completely different from commercial supply chains and, ironically, in the former there is a great deal of competition among existing emergency service providers. The demands aren't known in the case of disasters and the convergence of material creates serious congestion (he spoke of tuxes being delivered, coats to warm climates, and totally useless materials).

How do we quantify the social costs and the priorities of deliveries in such situations where time is such an essential element and there is most likely chaos in locations that require the deliveries? Why were the emergency providers not trained in humanitarian logistics? Critical supplies were not prepositioned. Hopefully, the government has learned from the numerous mistakes made and the serious shortcomings that resulted in so much pain, suffering, and loss of life.

To the rapt audience, Professor Holquin-Veras also talked about the importance of mathematical modeling and in identifying appropriate metrics for humanitarian logistics operations. He also emphasized that the problems are nonlinear (as opposed to linear). At lunch, he offered life lessons and stressed the importance of doing research and valuing the long-term.

So many came up to me after Professor Holquin-Veras' talk and visit to thank me for helping to host him. I say thank you to Professor Holquin-Veras for educating us on a topic of great importance.

I hope that more universities will undertake the research and educational challenges surrounding emergency logistics and preparedness.

Emergency Preparedness and Humanitarian Logistics

Doing Good with Good O.R. (Operations Research) has been a theme of one of my professional societies -- INFORMS. It is a theme that resonates with many and never has there been a time when the best in analytics should be applied to help solve some of the world's most pressing problems.

Crises, in particular, bring new challenges to problem-solving due to the immediacy of needs in terms of food, water, and medical supplies.

This Friday, in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series, we will be hosting Professor Jose Holquin-Veras of RPI, who will be speaking on Emergency Logistics Issues Impacting the Response to KATRINA: What Went Wrong? What Could We Do to Avoid a Repeat?
Immediately prior to his presentation, at 10:30AM, the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter will be hosting in ISOM Room 112 a special reception to display the award plaque that it received at the INFORMS San Diego conference last week.

We are honored that Professor Holquin-Veras will be speaking in our series. Interestingly, last week, President Obama was in New Orleans to survey the lingering impacts of Katrina. Not only do I have a family member living there but also several friends. Some former residents that I know well have left and many are still struggling.

To demonstrate the unique challenges associated with humanitarian logistics and emergency preparedness, I developed a website in conjunction with the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Conference: Humanitarian Logistics: Networks for Africa conference that I organized. This website contains many of the presentations given at the conference and one, delivered by Professor Emmett Lodree, focuses on Hurricane Katrina and impacts even on his close family. Please also look at the presentation of Mr. Antony Cooper of CSIR in South Africa, which is deeply illuminating.

We are now researching emergency and humanitarian supply chains.