Assigning spontaneous volunteers to relief efforts under uncertainty in task demand and volunteer availability

Abstract

In the wake of a disaster, people from nearby areas often converge to assist the affected community. Spontaneous volunteers are not affiliated with relief agencies but are in a unique position to provide invaluable aid at a crucial point in the disaster cycle. Often, these volunteers are ineffectively used or refused altogether. Volunteer Reception Centers (VRCs) can benefit from improved strategies to integrate the influx of spontaneous volunteers. In this paper, a multi-server queuing model is formulated to represent the dynamics of assigning spontaneous volunteers to tasks in a post-disaster setting. In particular, we consider the case of stochastic arrival of demand for service and stochastic arrival of volunteers, whose time in service is also stochastic. These assumptions mimic disaster relief tasks such as distribution of relief items, where both beneficiaries and volunteers arrive randomly. An optimal policy for assigning volunteers to tasks is generated using a Markov Decision Process. We then use simulation to compare the optimal policy against several heuristic policies and discuss real world implications. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.