| NSF Org: |
CMMI Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | April 20, 2010 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | January 20, 2012 |
| Award Number: | 1000018 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Edwin Romeijn
CMMI Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation ENG Directorate for Engineering |
| Start Date: | May 1, 2010 |
| End Date: | April 30, 2014 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $196,247.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $208,247.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2012 = $12,000.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1601 E MARKET ST GREENSBORO NC US 27411 (336)334-7995 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1601 E MARKET ST GREENSBORO NC US 27411 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | SERVICE ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001213DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041 |
ABSTRACT
This grant provides funding for the development of decision models to support the efficient and equitable management and distribution of supply in the resource constrained environment of food distribution. While most Humanitarian Supply Chain (HSC) related research has focused on the distribution and stocking of relief supplies or location of supply centers, in sharp contrast, issues surrounding donations management (i.e., the solicitation, coordination, distribution and management of donated goods, money and services that form inputs into the HSC) and its impact on the downstream relief recipient have been unexplored, particularly for food distribution. This research focuses on the development of predictive models to (1) characterize donor behavior, (2) quantify supply availability and (3) determine the equitable allocation of constrained supply. The models will account for the complexities associated with donations management such as uncertainty in both supply and demand, with demand often exceeding supply; the criticality of delivering goods to relief recipients at the right time; the appearance of sudden demand surges due to natural and manmade disasters; and perishability of donated items.
This research offers substantial benefits to society in terms of improved supply allocation and donations management for non-profit relief agencies. The ability to characterize donor behavior and incorporate the objective of equitably distributing supply enables relief agencies to make informed inventory and supply allocation decisions and strategically target donation solicitations. It also has the potential to enable humanitarian relief organizations to satisfy greater demand by more efficiently allocating available resources, thus impacting human life. The research addresses the critical intersection of humanitarian relief and engineering by linking donations management and food distribution to supply chain management (inventory policy) and forges a relationship necessary to address the significant issues in humanitarian relief in terms of equitable satisfaction of need, cost and human outcomes faced worldwide today.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This grant has worked to improve the operations of supply constrained relief agencies primarily tasked with providing assistance through equitable distribution of food. In particular, we have focused on issues surrounding the solicitation, coordination, distribution and management of donated goods and its impact on downstream relief recipients. Relief recipients in this sense are those who are food insecure, due to economic or disaster induced events.
Intellectual Merit:
This research has produced models that support the efficient and equitable management and distribution of supply in the resource constrained environment of food distribution.
(i) We have developed a novel formulation for food collections and deliveries. This formulation is an extension of the periodic vehicle routing problem and is called the periodic vehicle routing problem with backhauls (PVRPB). While the VRPB has been examined in the literature, our formulation for the PVRPB represents a new contribution to the general vehicle routing literature.
(ii) We have characterized the behavior of in-kinds donations in the non-profit food distribution environment and developed new models to forecast incoming donations from private and public sources.
(iii) We have also identified important economic factors that help characterize the need for food which extends the current measures of food need used by the collaborating partner.
(iv) We have incorporated measures of equity in our optimization models. We have developed deterministic network...
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