Description, Simulation and Analysis of Humanitarian Aid Missions

The global community is currently experiencing many disasters requiring humanitarian aid not only for ethical reasons. This concerns natural disasters, but also man-made disasters such as war, terrorist attacks and nuclear disasters. Humanitarian aid is generally understood as a response to humanitarian emergencies, which goes beyond an initial support. Key elements of humanitarian aid are disaster management and humanitarian logistics, which operate as organizational principles in order to coordinate the supply of food, goods and emergency rescue workers. Due to the high dynamics and limited information transparency it is very difficult for the responsible persons to mitigate the plight as effectively as possible. A good method to develop effective disaster risk management strategies and decision-making mechanisms is the use of model-based planning and control approaches. This article discusses the current modeling challenges of humanitarian aid scenarios as well as the potential of model-based decision making.