Indigenous Knowledge Management and Humanitarian Supply Chain for Disaster Mitigation and Sustainable Development in the Eco Communities of India: Holistic Systems Modeling Approach

Abstract

The Humanitarian Supply Chain (HSC) can prove to become quite instrumental to any developmental initiative for capacity building in the backward eco-communities of India, particularly those which are located in disaster-prone regions. Apart from providing immediate relief assistance at the incidence of natural disasters, what is more, critical is their long-term capacity building with a holistic perspective. This is required to enhance the effectiveness and speed of community response for major humanitarian programs, such as health, food, shelter, water, and sanitation. We can thus say that the success of short-term relief work lies in the long-term capacity building and, is critical to the performance of both current and future humanitarian operations and programs. The scenarios studied in this paper are with respect to those crucial decision environments and their underlying complexities which create inherent endogenous dynamics perpetuated by various stakeholders giving functional response towards the humanitarian supply chain.