Self-sustained community emergency preparedness and initial response planning considering volunteer dispatching

Self-sustained emergency preparedness and response planning, considering the dispatch of registered volunteers, is crucial for protecting human life safety in some isolated communities that cannot quickly obtain external support and lack official emergency human resources in the initial response phase after disasters. However, this problem is rarely addressed in the literature. To fill the research gap, this study proposes a two-stage stochastic programming model that facilitates the integrated management of pre-disaster emergency supply pre-stocking and post-disaster response, including supply delivery and service provision via volunteer dispatching, under goals of cost effectiveness and response fairness. We examine five comparison plans to show the benefits of our proposed model. With a real-world case study, we highlight its effectiveness and obtain managerial insights for better field practice. This study emphasizes the importance of improving self-sustained community emergency response ability through emergency supply pre-positioning and coordinated volunteer dispatching.