Enhancing decision making capabilities in humanitarian logistics by integrating serious gaming and computer modelling

Abstract

The field of humanitarian logistics has in recent times gained an increasing attention from both academics and practitioners communities alike. Although various research groups have addressed theoretical and technical developments in humanitarian logistics using conventional research tools, applied research appears to be often dependent on practitioners' inputs. This paper is an attempt to fill the existing gaps between academic research and practitioners' needs and proposes an integrated framework that consists of serious games and computer modelling. The serious games component aims to raise awareness on humanitarian logistics issues as well as provide a platform to facilitate the acquisition of inputs from humanitarian practitioners. Based on these inputs, a computer model will be developed. To test the framework, a real-life case study about the prepositioning of strategic stockpiles in Indonesia, one of the countries with the highest disaster risk exposure on a global scale, was used. Findings of this work highlight the role of serious games as risk-free environments for players to design strategies enhancing disaster preparedness in conjunction with broadly used research methodologies such as computer modelling. � 2020 ASTES Publishers. All rights reserved.