Disaster Relief - It's About Time

I have been busy co-organizing the 2nd International Conference on Dynamics of Disasters with my great colleagues, Professor Panos M. Pardalos of the University of Florida and Professor Ilias Kotsireas of Wilfrid Laurier University.

I've also been hard at work finishing up our paper for this conference, which takes place in Kalamata, Greece, at the end of June, and  grading the fascinating project papers of the students in my Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class.

Nice when your research is synergistic with your teaching!

The conference website now contains the program (to-date)  with confirmed speakers from many countries.

I have been completely engrossed in writing this paper, given the events in Nepal, post the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck in April.   One wants to help in any way possible and we have given a financial donation and, as as academics, we can certainly help through our research.

The title of the paper that I will be presenting at the conference is: "A Mean-Variance Disaster Relief Supply Chain Network Model for Risk Reduction with Stochastic Link Costs, Time Targets, and Demand Uncertainty."

This paper builds upon our earlier work in supply chain risk reduction (but in a corporate setting): Risk Reduction and Cost Synergy in Mergers and Acquisitions via Supply Chain Network Integration, Zugang Liu and Anna Nagurney, Journal of Financial Decision Making 7(2): (2011) pp 1-18, and our paper,  An Integrated Disaster Relief Supply Chain Network Model with Time Targets and Demand Uncertainty, Anna Nagurney, Amir H. Masoumi, and Min Yu, in Regional Science Matters: Studies Dedicated to Walter Isard, P. Nijkamp, A. Rose, and K. Kourtit, Editors, Springer International Publishing Switzerland (2015), pp 287-318.

Disaster relief is truly about time and models must incorporate the critical time dimension as ours do. For example, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has identified key benchmarks to response and recovery, which emphasize time and  they are: to meet the survivors’ initial demands within 72 hours, to restore basic community functionality within 60 days, and to return to as normal of a situation within 5 years. Timely and efficient delivery of relief supplies to the affected population not only decreases the fatality rate but may also prevent chaos.


There can be delays on any of the links in a disaster relief supply chain network and The New York Times on Monday, in an article  by Gardiner Harris, "Nepal's Bureaucracy Blamed as Quake Relief Supplies Pile Up," notes that:  Relief supplies for earthquake victims have been piling up at the airport and in warehouses here because of bureaucratic interference by Nepalese authorities who insist that standard customs inspections and other procedures be followed, even in an emergency, officials with Western governments and aid organizations said on Sunday. 


The article  continues with: The bottleneck was the fact that the bureaucratic procedures were just so heavy,” Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations resident coordinator, said in an interview. “So many layers of government and so many departments involved, so many different line ministries involved. We don’t need goods sitting in Kathmandu warehouses. We don’t need goods sitting at the airport. We need them up in the affected areas.

We do  the following in our paper:  We develop a mean-variance disaster relief supply chain network model with stochastic link costs and time targets for delivery of the relief supplies at the demand points, under demand uncertainty. The humanitarian organization seeks to minimize its expected total operational costs and the total risk in operations with an individual weight assigned to its valuation of the risk, as well as the minimization of expected costs of shortages and surpluses and tardiness penalties associated with the target time goals at the demand points.


The risk is captured through the variance of the total operational costs, which is relevant to the reporting of the proper use of funds to stakeholders, including donors. The time goal targets associated with the demand points enable prioritization as to the timely delivery of relief supplies. The framework handles both the pre-positioning of relief supplies, whether local or nonlocal, as well as the procurement (local or nonlocal), transport, and distribution of supplies post-disaster. The time element is captured through link time completion functions as the relief supplies progress along paths in the supply chain network. Each path consists of a series of directed links, from the origin node, which represents the humanitarian organization, to the destination nodes, which are the demand points for the relief supplies.

We propose an algorithm, which yields closed form expressions for the variables at each iteration, and demonstrate the efficacy of the framework through a series of illustrative numerical examples, in which trade-offs between local versus nonlocal procurement, post- and pre-disaster, are investigated. The numerical examples include a case study on hurricanes hitting Mexico.

UMass Amherst has a nice release on this conference  and the University of Florida had this writeup posted a while back. 

I look forward to presenting our paper at the International Conference on Dynamics of Disasters. The topic is certainly so relevant and even NSF just released a big press release on 6 projects that it has funded, jointly with Japan, on Big Data and disaster response.

A Tribute to Shelley Jackson, Head of the Bement School for 16 Years

How do you say good-bye to an educator, who gave  her time, energy, intelligence, great character, wisdom, warmth, kindness, and friendship to a school, its students, faculty, and staff and even their families,  for 16 years?

Last Friday, close to 300 people honored Shelley Borror Jackson, the Head of The Bement School in Old Deerfield for the past 16 years. Shelley came to Bement with her husband, Rob, and children, the same year that my daughter matriculated in kindergarten and her classmates left their palm prints in cement on the school grounds. Now that cohort is thriving in many colleges around the country.

Shelley saw scores of children graduate after 9th grade, and set them off to many high schools, including some of the most elite ones in the U.S.  She was a role model for both day students and the boarders who come from many countries, including China and South Korea.

Lisa and Michael Kittredge, the founder of the renowned Yankee Candle company, which he sold a few years ago,  hosted the dinner gala in honor of Shelley and Rob Jackson at their beautiful estate in Leverett. We were let in through the gates, drove past the golf course, and valets then took care of the parking of our cars.

At the gala event we got a chance to talk to many teachers that our daughter had had, administrators, and staff, even custodians, who had since left. Parents, students, and alums were there, some traveling thousands of miles.

From the delicious dinner, prepared by none other than Craig White, who used to run Bement's cafeteria, to the video recollections, to the singing by students and teachers, the Jacksons were honored in a very fitting tribute. Lisa Kittredge was a fabulous emcee and organized an event that noone will ever forget.

 

 

There were even special tissue boxes with the images of Shelley and Rob on the tables and, as we entered the building before the banquet area,  the hall was decorated with photos of Shelley, some of them with quotes.

 

Shelley is moving with her husband to NYC to head a new school, The New York International School, in Manhattan, and her photo graces its home page. Early next month, she will be officiating at her last Bement School graduation, a cherished and beautiful tradition and I still remember my daughter's graduation of almost 6 years ago.

We wish the Jackson family all the best on their new adventures in NYC and The New York International School is very lucky to have them! 

And for those of you who are wondering who will "replace" Shelley - Frank Henry, a long-time educator at Deerfield Academy, which is located across the street from Bement, will be the Interim Head next year. My husband is on the Board of Trustees of Bement and we are following to search for the permanent head closely.

My 18th PhD Student - Another Successful Dissertation Defense

Yesterday, was a very happy day since my 18th PhD student, Dong "Michelle" Li successfully defended her doctoral dissertation in Management Science at the Isenberg School of Management.

The title of her dissertation, which was nearly 250 pages long, was: Quality Competition in Supply Chain Networks with Applications to Information Asymmetry, Product Differentiation, Outsourcing, and Supplier Selection.

Michelle did a great job presenting, although we had to do some disruption management since in her scheduled room there was a final exam taking place and then an hour into her presentation in another room, another group of students entered for their final exams.

Michelle's full presentation can be downloaded here and it is stunning and her delivery was great, too.


Special thanks to the great committee members: Professor Adam Steven of my very own Operations and Information Management Department, Professor Hari Balasubramaian of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and Professor Christian Rojas of the Resource Economics Department for all their valuable inputs and also for helping Michelle in her academic job search process. She has had more on-campus interview invitations and visits than any of my former students but I expect, given her offers, that she will soon reach closure.

Michelle has an outstanding record of publications in such journals as the Annals of Operations Research, the International Transactions in Operational Research, Computational Economics, Computational Management Science, Netnomics, and the International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, with a series of other articles in review in other journals.

She has worked very hard as an Officer of the award-winning UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and even taught 3 sections of our required Operations Management undergraduate course at the Isenberg School. Both of her parents are academics in China and she told me that 18 is a lucky number in China.

Great to see my academic offspring genealogy tree growing.

Interestingly, my 17th PhD student, Dr. Amir H. Masoumi, told me that 17 was always his favorite number.

Photos from the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter Party

It was a great year for the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter with wonderful seminar talks,  the visit of Dr. Radhika Kulkari, VP of R&D of SAS, who is an INFORMS Fellow, and our tour of ISO New England, which monitors electric power reliability for all of New England.

Another highlight this year was celebrating the 10th anniversary of the chapter.


As the Faculty Advisor to this chapter, I always find it so rewarding to see the students flourish as leaders and members and this year I want to especially thank all the Chapter Officers: Michael Prokle (President), Amirhossein Alamdar Yazdi (Vic President), Sara Saberi (Treasurer),  Heng Chen and Kayla Monahan (Secretaries), Tulay Varol (Event Coordinator), Pritha Dutta (Communications Director), and Ekin Koker (Webmaster).


Yesterday afternoon we celebrated the end of the semester with a tradition, and we can certainly call it a tradition, since the chapter is now almost 11 years old, and we "end" each semester with a party with international cuisine and great conversations! The students and faculty come from the Isenberg School of Management and also the College of Engineering.

This year we even had two of our Operations and Information Management undergrad alums come back - Jan Sudra, who works for United Technologies (and just completed his MBA at UConn) and Zheng "WeiWei"  Ding, who works and lives in Manhattan, and graduated last year from the Isenberg School with a degree in Operations and Information Management. She took a Megabus yesterday yesterday from NYC.

Below I have posted some photos from our party yesterday. Thanks to all those who support our students throughout he year. This has been a great slate of officers to work with and it has been so much fun. Amazing what our students accomplish both in the classroom and beyond!

I was very busy talking so did not take as many photos as usual. I wish everyone best of luck with final exams and projects!

Dinner with a 1964 Olympic Gold Medalist on a Beautiful College Campus

I have met my share of Olympians, primarily, figure skaters, since that was one of my daughter's passions before college and she even skated in a performance with Johnny Weir at Lake Placid and we met Sarah Hughes and Todd Eldredge at the Mullins Center at UMass and Paul Wylie at a skating performance at Harvard when I was a Radcliffe Fellow.

Last weekend, I had a new experience - having dinner with an Olympic gold medalist, courtesy of my daughter, who has switched from figure skating to crew. Coincidentally, my Brown University room-mate for two years, Teresa Davila, had switched from being a ballerina in Chile to being  a member of the Brown University women's crew team when she matriculated there. I guess it is all about the muscle and the discipline!

The Olympian is Emory Clark, the author of  Olympic Odyssey.

The event was the Lafayette College crew banquet, which took place last Saturday. My daughter, as President of the Crew Club, got to officiate the lovely evening and we sat at the head table with the Olympian.

The beautiful campus was resplendent with blooming flowers (something not yet happening much in Massachusetts).

Now, how did an Olympian get to give the main speech? It's all because of those great school ties. The father of one of the rowers is Mr. Robert Hanke and he sent us the following explanatory message:

"Emory and I were fraternity brothers and classmates at Yale in 1960.  Emory was Captain of Yale’s Varsity Crew that year.  Following Yale, both Emory and I went on to serve as officers in the Marine Corps.  Emory then began rowing for Vesper Boat Club in Philadelphia, where he went on to win the 1964 National Championship in the coxed pair.  After that, rowing in the Vesper Eight, he went on to win the U.S. Olympic trials, beating heavily favored Harvard, Yale and a number of other top collage crews.  That marked the first time a non-collegiate eight-oar, or club boat, ever represented the United States in the Olympics.  In 1964, Emory and the Vesper Boat Club went on to the Tokyo Olympics, winning the Gold Medal and becoming Olympic Champions.  Emory continued competitive rowing most of his life, winning many more races, right up to his early 70s.  He book, Olympic Odyssey, has just been published."

See you at the races,

Robert Hanke

Col. USMC (Ret.)

The evening was magical and below are a few photos from the great event.  The Olympic gold medal is also featured below. I especially enjoyed hearing Mr. Emory Clark speak about his Olympic gold medal team-mates, who ranged in ages from 20 to 34, and the cox was a 46 year old Hungarian who had become a US citizen. He also spoke about Mr. John Kelly, the brother of the Princess of Monaco, Grace Kelly, who was affiliated with the Vesper Club. He emphasized how the team to beat at these Olympics (and many other races in that era) was the German team.

And, yes, both my daughter and Mr. Hanke's son were recognized for their leadership on the crew team. My daughter is the cox for two men's boats and if you can get a group of men to row fast as a team together, you are a born leader! The medals and trophies that they have been garnering this crew season plus the fun that they have been having, even with pre 6AM rowing practices, say it all.

Learning from Experts on Disaster Management

When it comes to learning and education there is nothing like hearing from front-line expert practitioners. When the topics to be covered include emergency preparedness and disaster response some of the top experts who have played a role in responding to emergencies both local and global are right here in the Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts. This is a public thank you acknowledging their contributions and willingness to share their wealth of experiences with students in a course on Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare that I taught this semester at the Isenberg School of Management.

The course, which has students from the Isenberg School, the College of Engineering, and the School of Public Health at UMass Amherst, covers all phases of disaster management from preparedness and mitigation to response and recovery. Those of us in western Massachusetts will never forget such recent “natural” disasters as the Springfield tornado on June 1, 2011, the once in a 500 year flood in Deerfield and surrounding areas due to Hurricane Irene in late August 2011, followed by the snowstorm in late October, 2011, which resulted in massive power outages, and Superstorm Sandy, which hit landfall in the U.S. on October 29, 2012, and is the second most costly natural disaster in the U.S. after Hurricane Katrina. And, of course, we will always remember the shocking Boston Marathon bombing of April 15, 2013, the suffering of the victims, and the heroism of responders.

On February 4, 2015, Ms. Debbie Wilson, a registered nurse from Lenox, MA, who is also a student at UMass Amherst, spoke on her experiences, over a 6 week period last Fall in Liberia, working with Doctors without Borders in battling the biggest outbreak of Ebola in history. She talked about helping to set up an Ebola treatment facility for 120 patients, the importance of medical supplies and equipment, which would have to be delivered from Geneva, Switzerland. She spoke about her personal experiences donning the special protective gear with hygienists who would then spray the chlorine on her after which she could carefully disrobe. She dealt with temperatures of 100 degrees, horrible rains, insufficient food for the staff - essentially making do with bread and mayonnaise with some ketchup for many meals. She described how they got rid of the medical waste by burning it in a pit. She emphasized the importance of logisticians, known as “logs” and her travel there, in itself, was a logistical feat. Ms. Wilson traveled by plane, truck, and canoe. Through her efforts and those of her fellow healthcare workers, the survival rate of Ebola patients was increased. She asks now that we not forget western African countries since the healthcare infrastructure there has been decimated since so many doctors and nurses died battling Ebola.

On February 11, 2015, Mr. Jeffrey Hescock, the Director for Emergency Management and Business Continuity at UMass Amherst since September 2013, spoke about protecting education, research, and the reputation of the university and how careful planning for sports events and other events on campus and periphery can enhance community building and minimize negative outcomes. In his previous position as the Emergency Management and Business Continuity Manager for the UMass President’s Office, Mr. Hescock was responsible for safely evacuating students and staff from UMass Dartmouth during the search for one of the Boston marathon bombers there. He described the shelters that were set up so that students, most of who are commuters, could reconnect with family members and friends. He also described the challenges of dealing with the immense media response to the events. Of course, given that we have had two university closings on Mondays this semester, due to major snowfalls, the students were also very interested in finding out who makes the decision to close the university. The emergency notification system, in particular, works very well. UMass has an excellent organization structure consisting of an emergency operations team as well as a business continuity and recovery committee and conducts not only table-top exercises but also field exercises such as the emergency sheltering exercise last spring at the Mullins Center, which also involved the town of Amherst.

Ms. Kim Goulette, the new Executive Director of the Pioneer Valley Red Cross spoke on February 23, 2015. The Red Cross provides immediate response to people in need because of disasters. Whether it is food, blankets, drinks, or even teddy bears for children in the near term, or shelter, food, and resources during the recovery phase, Red Cross volunteers are there to help. Ms. Goulette spoke about the big fire in Amherst last summer in an apartment complex at which she assisted after only about 1 week on the job. She described the role of the Red Cross in feeding the National Guardsmen who were deployed to eastern MA because of the multiple immense snowfalls this winter that disrupted lives, transportation, and other infrastructure. The Red Cross, which consists of 97% volunteers, provided soup, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, coffee and hot chocolate to the Guardsmen. A group of volunteers began their journey from the new Springfield headquarters with all the red cross activities now consolidated under one rook at 2AM to delivery nourishment.

On February 25, 2015, Mr. Brian Rust, the Director of Security Services at Cooley Dickinson Hospital spoke. He had originally been scheduled to speak the week before, but had to deal with emergencies at the hospital, and they were not patient emergencies! Nothing like some real-life practice in disruption management. Cooley Dickinson Hospital, which was recently acquired by Mass General Hospital, is one of our community hospitals, serving about 200,000 people. It seeks to provide the best possible healthcare in an appropriate setting. He noted that the population always assumes that hospitals will be available, when needed. He emphasized how a hospital is supposed to be prepared to be self-sufficient post a disaster for 96 hours. This, of course, entails backup power generators, the stockpiling of essential supplies, which is challenging given a model of just-in-time daily deliveries of medicines, and possible needs for additional food. Hazard analyses are conducted each year to prepare for possible natural disasters, human hazards, and technological ones. He emphasized the importance of communications and building strong relationships with other hospitals, first responders, etc.

During the snowstorms this past winter, 70 staff slept at the hospital to make sure that there was appropriate patient coverage, since a storm could affect transportation. And, the week prior to his lecture at the Isenberg School, Mr. Rust had to deal with multiple emergencies, beginning with a computer failure on Monday, followed by complete communication failure on Wednesday (not related to the Monday one) with no Internet or phone lines available. Hence, medical records could not be accessed electronically, and X-rays could not be read. Back to documentation on paper. This major disruption was fixed on Wednesday but then Wednesday afternoon a sprinkler pipe burst and flooded the back of the Emergency Room with thousands of gallons of water pouring in. There is a new cancer facility being constructed above the Emergency Room area and it seems that the pipe was not properly insulated. With facility experts on hand (luckily, he said, not everything has been outsourced) in a few hours the area was cleaned up and disinfected. During that period, however, 4 ambulances had to be diverted to other hospitals.

On March 25, 2015, we had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Jeff Meyer, the CEO of Blood Services for the Red Cross in Massachusetts and Connecticut, who told us how he had been a consultant for the Red Cross and was offered a job with this organization the day before 9/11. After the terrorist attacks that horrific day, he decided that he wanted to help communities and accepted the job offer from the Red Cross. With an outstanding background in operations, including an MBA, he has helped the Red Cross in balancing supply and demand of this life-saving product that is also highly perishable and has dealt with many challenges in the changing economic landscape of blood supply chains.

On April 8, 2015, the students got to hear from SMSgt Thomas Orifice of the 104^th Fighter Wing of the Air National Guard in Westfield. He came dressed in fatigues and had the students at the edge of their seats as he spoke about the response to Superstorm Sandy. Because NOAA had forecasted Superstorm Sandy one week before landing, major planning could be done in a timely manner and, within 24 hours, the Air National Guard had mobilized and delivered water, food, and fuel, which was direly needed since, with the loss of electricity, the gas pumps were not functioning and public transportation in NYC was at a standstill. Mr. Orifice has had an over thirty year career with the National Guard and has served in France Italy, Germany, and Kyrgyztan, and also took part in the liberation of Bosnia and Iraq Operation Freedom. 

And, on April 22, 2015, last,  but not least, the "other" Professor Nagurney (my husband), Dr. Ladimer S. Nagurney, who is a Professor of Electric and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, at the University of Hartford, spoke to the class on Disaster Communications, including the challenges of technology in this important domain, along with FirstNet.

Many thanks to the above Hometown Heroes, who took time out of their very busy schedules to share experiences with students – we are very lucky to have you in our midst.

Also, given that the number of disasters is growing, as well as the number of people affected by them, I have made the lectures, as well as many of the guest lecture presentations, available online.

Great Students and Great Faculty at the Isenberg School

Now is that time of the academic year during which there are numerous deadlines but we still find the time to celebrate student and faculty accomplishments. Yesterday not only did we have an All School meeting to recognize doctoral student and faculty achievements but last evening was the UMass Honors banquet and, as Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy said,  this is always his favorite event of the year because we celebrate faculty accomplishments in research, teaching, and service. At this event we recognize recipients of Distinguished Teaching Awards, Conti Fellowships, and many other awards, including national and international ones that our faculty received.

It was very special for me to see my Medal from the University of Catania in Italy, which I received last June,  recognized in the glossy program! The dinner was delicious from the salad and beef tenderloin with veggies to the chocolate torte with cherries and whipped cream/ The company at our table was also wonderful! It was great to see Dean Mark Fuller there and also our Associate Dean Tom Moliterno.

And,just the evening before, we had the Isenberg Scholar Celebration.

I took the photos below at the All School Faculty meeting at which my doctoral student, Sara Saberi, was one of 2 doctoral students recognized with the 2014-2015 Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award. My colleagues, Professors Ryan Wright and Senay Solak each received Research Awards, as did Professor David Piercey of Accounting,  and Professor Mila Sherman of Finance received a Teaching Award as did Pam Trafford and Professor Traci Hess from my department.

Congrats to all the outstanding faculty and our doctoral students!