Empirically grounded research in humanitarian operations management: The way forward

The number of people affected by disasters and the cost of responding is growing considerably (Guha-Sapir et al., 2014). There are trends in these numbers in that deaths from floods and storms are on the rise, possibly related to the consequences of climate change. In fact, seven out of the top 10 natural disasters by number of deaths in 2015 were weather related events such as floods and heat waves (UNISDR, 2016). These also tend to occur in densely populated regions, e.g. in Asia, where 71.8% of the worldwide disaster related deaths occurred in 2015 (UNISDR, 2016), so there are geographical shifts as well. Roughly, about 250 million people are affected by disasters every year (IFRC, 2016). These figures obviously do not include the higher number of people affected by man-made disasters like armed conflicts and wars. These types of disasters have a large impact on the number of refugees and internally displaced persons. This number reached a sad historical record of over 59 million people in 2014 (UNHCR, 2016). Population growth, climate change, and their potential impact on migration, urbanization, and resulting food and water shortages may lead to more conflict and war. It is clear that the impact of disasters on human life is going to increase in the future. This increase and its associated demand for resources should be put against the current decline in funding to appreciate the challenges humanitarian organizations (HOs) are facing. Humanitarian operations are about logistics and politics. The logistics relate to the operations necessary to bring the aid to beneficiaries. They are about matching demand with supply under severe resource constraints, uncertainty, and lack of visibility. The politics relate to the willingness of the international community to provide the necessary funds as well as the access, i.e. to protect the humanitarian space HOs require to guarantee neutrality and equity to all people in need. Humanitarian operations are usually conveniently divided into disaster response and development programs. Disaster response entails operations management challenges such as inventory prepositioning, fast mobilization and deployment, efficient purchasing, management of earmarked cash donations, and logistics of in-kind donations. Disaster response is characterized by short duration, high urgency, and large uncertainty. Development programs are geared at the improvement of the quality of life of the poorest of the poor worldwide. With objectives such as the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, reduction of child mortality and the combat of pandemics the United Nations (UN) committed to a global partnership for development through the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in 2000. Unfortunately, the ambitious goals were not achieved by the deadline of 2015. The UN set up a new 2030 agenda for sustainable development in 2015. This agenda is composed of 17 sustainable development goals (UNSDG) that build on the MDG with the objective of ending poverty, fighting inequality and tackling climate change (UNDP, 2016). The UN relies heavily on logistics to reach and support the poorest of the poor. Interestingly, the new UNSDG also strongly rely on the active involvement of business. Development programs in support of the UNSDG struggle with operations management challenges such as scarce budgets, lack of local infrastructure, and last mile distribution in geographically scattered rural areas. Development programs are characterized by long duration, moderate urgency, and relatively low uncertainty. HOs often deal with a mix of disaster response and development programs simultaneously. HOs must guarantee that ongoing development programs keep functioning while they also respond to disasters worldwide. This operational mix entails disaster cycle management challenges such as planning multi-objective global logistics, balancing earmarked donations for disaster response with budget needs for development programs, setting up robust supply networks and determining the push-pull boundaries in the supply chain. Unfortunately, some areas have become so vulnerable, e.g. because of climate change forcing migration which in turn creates conflict, often in a context of poverty, weak government and corruption, that the slightest disaster quickly turns into a major crisis. In short, these complex disasters constantly balance between development or reconstruction and immediate disaster response. This special issue contains contributions dealing with all the humanitarian operations pictured above: disasters, development, the operational mix of the two, as well as complex disasters. The guest editors sincerely hope you will enjoy the read. Most of the humanitarian operations management (HOM) challenges listed above are practical in nature. However, extant literature has prioritized optimization models based on abstract problems that are not sufficiently grounded in empirical observations. Thus, models are methodologically rigorous and deal with interesting technical challenges but often offer limited insights to practice. 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