Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/227753 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper Series in Production and Energy No. 52
Publisher: 
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute for Industrial Production (IIP), Karlsruhe
Abstract: 
Social cost functions in humanitarian operations are defined as the sum of logistics and deprivation costs. They are widely regarded as appropriate objective functions, even though the way they were introduced requires cautiously formulated deprivation cost functions for the analyzed goods and do not allow decision makers to include their individual preferences. We develop this approach further and introduce a normalized weighted sum approach to increase decision makers' understanding of the tradeoffs between cost and suffering and, therefore, increase transparency significantly. Furthermore, we apply the approach to a case study of a hypothetical water system failure in the city of Berlin. We show that the normalized weighted sum approach significantly improves transparency and leads to a deeper understanding of the tradeoffs during the crisis. Consequently, it proved itself as a powerful tool for decision makers preparing for or navigating through a crisis.
Subjects: 
humanitarian logistics
social cost
deprivation cost
facility location planning
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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