Análisis de la coordinación de actores en la distribución de ayudas de la respuesta logística humanitaria de última milla desde el enfoque de análisis de contenido

Abstract

Natural disasters imply a disturbance in society dynamics, in which multiple social, environmental and economic impacts occur. The cycle of humanitarian operations involved in disaster management contemplates phases prior to the event called mitigation and preparation, as well as response and recovery subsequent phases. The response phase is understood as the operational stage in which the community faces the immediate and short-term effects of the disaster. In this scenario, demands arise to meet urgent requirements for the rescue, search and evacuation of people, as well as the quick supply of basic goods such as food, water, shelter and medical services. To attend to these demands, multiple supply chains with a diversity of actors are suddenly activated in the field creating a socio-technical system, i.e., a social network that makes and executes technical decisions for supply flow. These systems are handled by humanitarian logistics and have been characterized as complex, highly uncertain and with multiple challenges, among which the actor’s coordination stands out as one of the most influential factors in improving the effectiveness of response systems. The purpose of this document is to explore the coordination of actors in humanitarian logistics, in particular, the distribution of last-mile aid, considered as the cumulative effect of decision-making in the last link of the supply chain, where the final delivery of aid is made to the victims or demand points. This exploration is done through a mixed approach, with a methodology that begins with the collection of empirical data from four study cases of real events, which collected 191 press articles, 68 reports, 47 communications, 17 videos and 5 external investigations. Sources analysis was addressed through the content analysis technique aimed at the characterization of decision criteria used for the distribution of last-mile humanitarian aid, which is analyzed from the relationships between the attributes included in the analysis: (i) disaster, (ii) type of actor, (iii) publication time and (iv) detailed rule for aid assignation. From the data, the Multiple Correspondence Analysis ACM is proposed as the statistical technique to identify the attributes correlations. Results show a greater correlation between the type of actor and the type of rule used for the distribution, as well as between the type of disaster and the type of distribution rule. These findings allow to make conclusions and recommendations for further research that considers how the nature of the actors involved leads them to make decisions around a preferred set of rules for aid distribution and how these preferences impact the aggregate or global behavior of the response.