Method of optimization for dealing with real life uncertainties in humanitarian supply chain operations:

Humanitarian supply chain operations often happens in unstable and rapidly changing environments. As a result, organizations face a variety of uncertainties—ranging from security and political instability to funding constraints, logistical challenges, and rapidly shifting needs—which can make planning, decision-making, and delivering assistance extremely complex.

To address these uncertainties, humanitarian organizations must adapt by employing strategies such as flexible funding mechanisms, pre-positioning of supplies, local procurement, risk assessment and contingency planning, and strong partnerships. Leading experts and academics also emphasize the development of optimization frameworks that account for uncertainty. By advancing stochastic and robust optimization methods—capable of handling correlated factors (e.g., weather events, regional instability) and incomplete data (e.g., unknown demand distributions)—we can significantly improve the speed and effectiveness of humanitarian responses.