Improving the logistics and collaborative sensemaking during a disaster relief effort using a flexible floating and modular seaport: Investigating humanitarian logistics using a mathematical optimization model and a complex interaction research

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....

Compound risk: when sudden-onset disasters coincide with COVID-19: Balancing the livelihood and the COVID-19 trajectory of rural communities in developing countries

During the battle against COVID-19, sudden-onset disasters keep happening. These two consecutive events are different in nature and sometimes ask for counter-productive policy interventions: where the epidemic can be contained by ensuring social distancing practices, reducing the number of contacts, and offering hygienic conditions, the response...

Rapid Building Damage Detection Through SAR Timeseries Analysis in the Google Earth Engine: Using Sentinel-1 GRD imagery in the Google Earth Engine to detect Building Damage in Rapid Disaster Response Situations

Humanitarian crises related to building and infrastructure damage, i.e. natural hazards and collateral damage during warfare, result in many hundreds of thousands of casualties on a yearly base. Earthquakes, for example, are responsible for taking around 50.000 lives on a yearly base due to falling debris and collapsing buildings, making them...

Resilient airports: Using a new resilience measuring approach to evaluate policies that improve the resilience of airports in the immediate post-disaster response

Airports are a special critical infrastructure in a disaster response from a resilience point of view. They must overcome two types of shocks when they are affected by a disaster. They are not only hit by a disaster, which decreases their performances. Airports also need to act as a humanitarian and logistic hub for the disaster response which...

Increasing situational awareness in the golden period of the response phase of sudden-onset disasters by mapping community reachability

In the response phase of sudden-onset natural disasters, information is of crucial importance for relief organisations and their aid workers. Information is necessary for gaining situational awareness in a disaster for effective decision-making in response operations. In my research, an information system is designed that maps the reachability...

An exploratory study on the (re)configuration of humanitarian supply chains throughout the disaster life cycle