{"id":35213,"date":"2017-11-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-16T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ready-for-feedback3.com\/shape-history\/fmr\/lee-zbinden\/"},"modified":"2024-08-27T14:32:33","modified_gmt":"2024-08-27T19:32:33","slug":"lee-zbinden","status":"publish","type":"fmr_content","link":"https:\/\/www.fmreview.org\/es\/lee-zbinden\/","title":{"rendered":"Marrying logistics and technology for effective relief"},"content":{"rendered":"

During an emergency, logistics departments have the primary mission to procure and track food, non-food items and gifts-in-kind (solicited and unsolicited) from appeal through to delivery while simultaneously monitoring the commodity and financial information along the relief pipeline. Thus, logistics links all the stakeholders in the relief delivery process. Timely and accurate availability of information is key. An effective operation depends on the emergency manager being aware of the changing needs of the field and communicating these to donors. Despite being the conduit connecting donors to beneficiaries, logisticians are seldom active participants in the acquisition and implementation of IT solutions pertaining to relief operations. <\/font><\/p>\n

The relief technology landscape<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

The way information technology is used varies widely among humanitarian relief organisations(1). The technology landscape in the humanitarian sector is often extremely fragmented, limiting the availability of timely and accurate information. Organisations either buy large off-of-the shelf commercial packages that need extensive customisation or create small in-house solutions for each field location. In the former instance, the dynamic variables and context of relief are not captured. Customisation to address this problem is very expensive and inhibits absorption of routine upgrades. Attempts to scale up home-grown solutions are rarely effective and are often dependent on the transient expertise of the organisation's IT staff.<\/font><\/p>\n

Despite large investments by organisations, origin to destination information about the money, food and non-food supplies and gifts-in-kind is not readily available to decision makers in real time. In addition, manual, non-standardised, error-prone processes still dominate. IT resources which could enhance information availability, reporting and learning are often not put to best use. Some of the deficiencies of current relief information systems include:<\/font><\/p>\n