Supply Chain View

According to OCHA funding for Logistics Cluster activity for the Pakistan floods is still $5m short of the $15m requirement estimated. All the learning from recent humanitarian emergencies (from the Asian tsunami of 2004 to the Haiti earthquake earlier this year) shows how vital logistics coordination is to an effective response. $15m is small as [...]

Just a quick reminder that the Disasters Emergency Committee is still pushing for funds to help relieve the terrible situation in Pakistan. The NGOs receiving DEC funding have highly developed and professional humanitarian logistics capabilities, which are vital to rapid and effective intervention. You can donate online now here https://www.donate.bt.com/dec_form_pfa.html?p_form_id=PFA45. If you are a UK [...]

Here is something very useful for humanitarian logisticians: the Logistics Operations Guide, or LOG for short, brought to you by the Logistics Cluster. But not only is it useful for those in the humanitarian sector, it is an excellent model for the clear communication of logistics know-how: succint, practical and well-referenced. (The big logo below [...]

Now is clearly the time for reflection on the logistics operations during the response to the Haiti earthquake in January this year (see my posts on articles by Mike Whiting and Maggie Heraty). Dr. Paul S. Auerbach is Professor of Surgery in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. A few [...]

More interesting stuff in Focus (shock, horror!) In the May 2010 edition Maggie Heraty describes what she saw and experienced while on mission with RedR. Maggie arrived in Haiti just over three weeks after the earthquake to identify training needs for NGO staff in the immediate disaster response phase, and longer term looking at recovery [...]

Mike Whiting has written an excellent article on the emergency response to January’s Haiti earthquake in the April 2010 edition of Logistics and Transport Focus. My copy of Focus often languishes in the in-tray for a couple of weeks before I even get the plastic wrap off, but I’d urge all CILT members to read [...]

This came round on a Current Awareness Bulletin from CILT but the link was mangled – eventually I found the right site. This is pleasingly low-tech: a google map with customised icons linked to some database info about each port or rail freight terminal. This is the multimodal map‘s own website. This is what it [...]

Trying to present statistics in an interesting and engaging way is terribly challenging. In the supply chain world, we often have to communicate rather dry numbers that imply significant conclusions for how our business should be run. This has been kicking around the internet for some time now, so apologies if you’ve seen it before. [...]

I forgot to mention in my post yesterday about last week’s HELP Forum meeting that Mike Whiting has also written about the air operation during Nargis, both the air-bridge from Bangkok and the helicopter operation in-country. Mike was OiC for Aviation for the Logs Cluster, so this is an authoritative account. You can find his [...]

The CILT‘s Humanitarian and Emergencies Logistics Professionals (HELP) Forum met again on Tuesday last week (28 Oct 2008). It was another interesting session, so I thought I would post a brief report (with a long title). My apologies if I have mangled any of the following in transcribing my notes. For those that don’t know, [...]