System dynamics investigation of capacity building by humanitarian supply chain in disaster prone eco-communities of India

Abstract

Humanitarian Supply Chain (HSC) is central to any developmental initiative meant for capacity building in the eco-communities of India, particularly for those which are located in disaster prone regions. Although being environmentally rich, such class of rural or tribal eco-communities and their people are often devoid of supplies of adequate Physical, Social, Economic, and Technological resources and are forced to struggle on a daily basis to survive and are unable to cope with any additional stress factors like population growth and abject poverty. In this regard, sustainable humanitarian supply chain practice and community based resource management can collectively promote more resilient communities promoting social, economic and environmental equity and ethical imperatives for sustainable community development. Apart from providing immediate relief assistance at the occurrence of natural disasters, what is more critical is their long term capacity building with a holistic perspective. This is also vital to enhance the effectiveness and speed of community response to major humanitarian programs, such as health, food, shelter, water, sanitation and employment. In this study, an attempt has been made to develop a system dynamics model of humanitarian supply chain in order to capture causal dynamics and inter linkages within the system under investigation and suggest some critical intervention strategies for enhancing overall performance. In this study, an economic sub-sector base model for the Indian tribal communities has been calibrated and used for simulation analysis as a reference case-study. The key motivation to select tribal regions for our model was that the various humanitarian measures undertaken under India Eco-Development Project (IEP) by the Indian government are not able to meet the intended objectives.