Improving the logistics and collaborative sensemaking during a disaster relief effort using a flexible floating and modular seaport

Abstract

Sometimes seaport capacity is a bottleneck during disaster relief operations. This research investigates a flexible, floating and modular seaport. This seaport is stored all around the world and when necessary it ships seaport handling capacity from those storage facilities to the disaster area in order to help with the disaster relief effort. After usage of a mathematical optimization model and the determination of several possible future disaster scenarios we propose that an applicable logistical design of this seaport stores 1,950 TEU/h of handling capacity of this flexible seaport at Kuala Lumpur and 812 TEU/h at Algiers. Next to the logistics contribution the way in which the possible usage of such a seaport influences the communication process of actors involved in a disaster relief effort is studied. We propose that the collaborative sensemaking in disasters is the object of interest. With the help of an emergency simulation role playing game experiment it is concluded that the usage of the seaport leads to, among other things; more equally distributed participation, quicker start of sharing of information, increased awareness of the role of others and more agreement on the common goal. The hypothesis is that this is because of an increased complexity. Integrating this complexity with the logistical applicable design leads to storing a smaller amount of seaport handling capacity at a lot of facilities. This results in a design of opening facilities in Kuala Lumpur (with 1350 TEU/h stored), Algiers (with 356 TEU/h stored), Dakar (with 57 TEU/h stored), Maputo (with 279 TEU/h stored), Berbara (with 35 TEU/h stored) and Corinto (with 332 TEU/h stored).