Introduction to the Workshop

The mobility of relief forces and the supply of personnel and goods are of outstanding importance during and after a crisis. However, the transportation system often collapses first in crisis situation leading to massive impairments for the affected population and the work of professional responders: Nearly all of their actions depend on functioning and reliable transport and logistics infrastructures in order to e.g. reach corresponding action places, to ensure evacuation or to provide the affected population with relief goods and services.

The objective of the workshop is to discuss the state of the art, challenges and future trends of transport and logistics management in crisis response. Thus, the workshop aims to contribute to the discussion on the current state of the art, the practitioner’s needs in the logistics and transportation area as well as the different methodological and technical approaches within the research and development communities. The workshop will be designed as a mix of presentations, interactive elements and several discussions. The outcomes (tool presentations, brainstorming results, lessons learnt) will be documented and shared with the ISCRAM community subsequent to the conference.

Workshop Topics

The aim of the workshop is twofold. On the one hand we demonstrate and discuss different approaches for logistics and transportation issues within crisis management. On the other hand, the workshop is complemented by a dialog between solution developers/providers and practitioners in order to exchange experiences and to gather information about the needs, trends and the requests.

The workshop addresses following topics:

1. Case studies and reflections from practice: In the context of the workshop, it is planned to run light versions or demos of the presented transportation and logistics management solutions.

2. Decision support, sense making and judgement: In the context of the workshop it is planned to discuss concrete requirements for a suitable decision support system for transport and logistics related tasks. Each professional responder has its specific requirements regarding decision support. To provide an appropriate system it is necessary to know as much as possible about specific requirements. This information will be gathered during the workshop in order to address specific needs of the involved responders.

3. Data fusion, representation, and visualization: The required information is based on different sources and data (aerial data, satellite images or images from helicopter/aircraft), terrestrial data (Bluetooth, Floating Car Data (FCD), cameras, induction loops), historical data or real-time data. Which information is used and visualized depends on their availability in the area of interest. The question is which kind of information sharing and visualization is requested in future - Stand-alone systems for installation, web interface, common information space, common operational picture etc.?

4. Planning horizons: Appropriate tools often cover one particular planning horizon, e.g. the identification of an optimal route within the next 30 minutes or the strategic location of a distribution hub being relevant for the next ten years. In contrast to software tools, practitioners tend to relate the four crisis management lifecycle, which leads to the question in how far innovative tools should incorporate those practices by offering an “agile”, inter-connected and open infrastructure.

Workshop Structure

In order to stimulate the discussion on the state of the art, challenges and future trends of transport and logistics management in crisis response the first part of the workshop is dedicated to present several existing practices, tools and solutions. As a starting point two solutions (KeepOperational and HumLog) are demonstrated based on a practical experiment by the workshop organizers in cooperation with the German Federal Agency For Technical Relief. Interested participants are invited to present their solutions and experiences in an app. 15 minutes presentation including a demonstration of a particular method, tool or use case.

The second part of the workshop is an interactive session where the broader audience gets the opportunity to have a deeper look into the presented solutions. The solution providers get the opportunity to answer individual questions in face-to-face discussions. If applicable, the audience will be allowed to “play around” in a fair-like setting. The second block will be followed by a discussion regarding the feedback on the presented tools, the broader experiences of the audience and the question which challenges and trends can be identified in the area of logistics and transport management in disaster relief.

Agenda Sunday 21 May 2017

Participation

There are two ways to participate in the workshop:

We invite solution providers and practitioners to present a solution which they would like to share with the ISCRAM community. The solutions do not necessarily have to be running systems with a high technology readiness level. Nevertheless, they should have a relation to transport and logistics management tasks in disaster relief operations, representing all involved stakeholders (e.g. humanitarian organizations, military or first responder ). To apply for a solution presentation, please send a brief description of the solution to carsten.dalaff@dlr.de before 2nd May 2017.

We invite the ISCRAM community to join the workshop in order to get an insight on the presented solutions, to share their experiences and thoughts in this area as well as to discuss the needs, challenges and trends in the area of transport and logistics solutions in crisis management. Please register for the workshop by sending a short Email before 15th May 2017 to carsten.dalaff@dlr.de.

See also: https://iscram2017.mines-albi.fr/tlmcs/