HokieTalks: Supply chains for disaster relief operations

[00:00:06] >> So I am a professor in the College of Business but most of my research focuses on helping organizations like the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders in terms of fulfilling their mission to serve vulnerable populations who are impacted by disasters and so my motivation is this. Obviously there are significant impacts that hurricanes and other types of natural hazards can have on our society and in particular one of the things that we tend to see as a result of the hurricane season is folks who have to leave their homes and so this is it looks a little bit I know like rush hour in Hampton Roads or maybe on the Capital Beltway but notice that there's no one going the other direction everybody is headed out of town and so as I said what I'm interested in doing is helping the organizations that help with the logistics of making sure that these people can get to where they need to get safely they have a place to go to some people will be able to go to hotels or go to families family members homes other folks will need to go to an emergency shelter and so the organizations put out a lot information about where to go and how to get there etc. [00:01:19] The type of work that I do with them there's more behind the scenes to help these organizations get set up to receive people as they are coming to the shelters so that they have a place where they know that they will have cots and blankets and water available to them and a warm dry place to to spend a couple of days before