Pre-Disaster Preparedness in Food Bank Supply Chains Addressing Supply Uncertainty and Different Objectives

A critical decision in pre-disaster humanitarian logistics planning is determining the amount of aid to preposition to ensure timely and effective emergency response. To support managers in this process, we propose four mathematical formulations designed to optimize food prepositioning and subsequent distribution while minimizing unmet demand under supply uncertainty. Two formulations adopt the cardinality-constrained approach: one focuses on minimizing unmet demand, and the other incorporates equity in meeting demand. The remaining two formulations are scenario-based, addressing the same objectives with and without equity considerations. To compare the variations in the solutions generated by the proposed formulations and gain a deeper understanding of their behavior and performance, the formulations are applied to synthetic instances. To assist managers in selecting the model that best aligns with their objectives, we provide a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of each formulation. Our results show that considering supply uncertainty has important implications for the total costs, and that having adequate storage capacity may help mitigate the problems caused by this uncertainty.