Hurricane Katrina Supply Chains Tricia Wachtendorf

University of Delaware and Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute Focus on Supply Chain Flows in the
Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

On August, 29 2005, Hurricane Katrina, a strong Category 4 storm, devastated a widespread
area long the Gulf Coast region of the United States. The disaster was further exacerbated by
the failure of levees surrounding the city of New Orleans. Although most people did evacuate
prior to the storm, a significant number of community residents remained in the impacted area,
either ignoring evacuation warnings or not having the resources to leave prior to the storm. Among
the many challenges that accompanied this catestrophic event was contending with the needs for
and flows of material supplies to victims and responders. It is this critical issue that the multidisciplinary
team from the University of Delaware (UD) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) are addressing
in their quick response study of Hurricane Katrina. Dr. Jose Holguin-Veras and Dr. Satish Ukkusuri
of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Center for Intermodal Freight Mobility and Security and
Dr. Tricia Wachtendorf of the Univerity of Delaware's Disaster Research Center are leading this
timely research project.

Understanding supply chains and developing state of the art tools to coordinate them is vital.
According to a February 25 2006 Cox News Service article by Julia Malone (White House Report
Cites Failures in Katrina Response) Senate Homeland Security Chairman Susan Collins said the
White House report on Hurricane Katrina "rightly acknowledges the importance of strengthening and
updating the logistics system to make it more flexible, efficient and transparent" to contend
with the convergence of material goods and supplies to a disaster area. Methodologies and tools that
accelerate the meeting of critical resource demands at the site of an extreme event are of the utmost
importance. Indeed, this topic was identified as a key research issue by Mr. Joe Picciano, then Acting
Director of FEMA Region II, on the basis of the World Trade Center disaster experience. Picciano
highlighted that the development of such techniques is of critical importance to “…improve the
distribution of critical assets and goods in a catastrophic event…”

Multidisciplinary approaches to understanding these questions are necessary. UD and RPI
researchers are basing their methodologies on state of the art concepts in social sciences, control theory,
and robust stochastic optimization. Drs. Holgiun-Veras, Ukkusuri, and Wachtendorf hope that such tools
will help to reduce the adverse impacts of convergent low priority goods while expediting the flow of high
priority supplies to various response related sites.

The National Science Foundation recognized the importance of learning more about how
supply chains work following disasters and the critical nature of understanding the impact of this phenomenon
during the Hurricane Katrina response. NSF awarded Drs. Holgiun-Veras, Ukkusuri, and Wachtendorf with
a Small Grant for Exploratory Research. This SGER project is concerned with gathering perishable information and
data about the basic features of the formal and the informal logistic systems and the flows of critical and non-critical
supplies to areas impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Prior research points to the challenges associated with setting up
supply chains to an impacted site that fully account for immediate resource requirements, the range of supply sources
and source mechanisms, as well as the management and prioritization of critical versus non-essential donations.
This study works to (1) identify the basic features of the supply chains delivering resources to the Gulf Coast;
(2) gather data about the actual flows of critical and non-critical supplies; and (3) document lessons learned, both
positive and negative. Interviews were conducted with key organizational actors in Misssissippi and Louisiana in
December, 2005, January 2006, March 2006, and November, 2006.

The project brings together a strong team of engineers and social scientists to examine the important
issue of material convergence and supply chain flow. RPI, which has the oldest Civil Engineering program in the

,
has long been a pioneer in cutting edge research. RPI’s Center for Intermodal Freight Security and Mobility
(with the University of Maryland) and led by Dr. Holguín-Veras is at the forefront of freight transportation research.
The University of Delaware's Disaster Research Center is the oldest center in the world devoted to the social science
study of disasters. Its over forty years of research has yielded a large body of work that has influenced the scholarship
on and management of disasters. UD also has a collection of over 55,000 publications on disasters and offers
concentrations in disasters and emergency management at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Dr. Tricia Wachtendorf is a sociologist with a research emphasis on complex organizations. She has over a decade of disaster research experience, including expertise in conducting qualitative field work in disaster environments such as the 1997 Red River Flood, the 2001 terrorist attackes in New York City, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Her research has included studies of convergence behavior, community-based disaster planning and response, improvised action, and multi-jurisdictional coordination.

Dr. Jose Holguin-Veras is a civl engineer and one of the leading researchers in freight transportation systems. His research focuses heavily on the interaction of economic and behavioral principles to transportation modeling of large scale systems. He has conducted research on the behavioral impacts of 9/11 on travel behavior and on ways to expedite the flow of goods with multiple priorities.

Dr. Satish Ukkusuri is a civil engineer with extensive experience in transportation systems analysis. Previously, he was actively involved in multiple projects with NSF and TxDOT. With respect to disaster managment issues, he was involved in developing state of the art integrated transportation models in the event of an earthquake for teh Mid America Earthquake Center (MAE). His research interests include accounting for uncertainty in transportation networks, modeling advanced information strategies in transportation networks, transporation telematics, transportation planning, and transportation operations.

Several other researchers play an important role in this project. Graduate students in civil
engineering - Noel Perez (RPI) - and sociology - Bethany Brown (UD) - are involved in data collection
and analysis. Univerity of Delaware undergraduate students Caroline Williams (anthropology), Jeffrey
Engle (disaster management), Chris Colindres, Brandi Gilbert, and Lauren Ross are working on the
project, as are Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute undergraduate students.

In summer 2006, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense provided funding for
two Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) fellows who chose to focus on related topics as part
of the Disaster Research Center's summer site program. Nnenia Campbell is a senior at the University
of Central Florida with majors in psychology and sociology. She is interested in issues of social
stratification and, through a content analysis of newspaper articles, is writing a paper examining
how the role of social class in the distribution of critical provisions and supplies following Hurrican Katrina.
Kathryn Fox is a senior at Dickinson College with majors in sociology and environmental studies. Her
paper examines the convergence of people, specifically helper convergers, following Hurrican Katrina and
the intersection of those helpers from outside the impacted area and those from within the affected region.


Brandi Gilbert	Bethany Brown	Caroline Williams

Jeffrey Engle	Lauren Ross	Chris Colindres

Please check back regularly as findings, links to papers, and other information is posted.

Selection of Material Available Online

Emergency Logistics Issues Impacting the Response to Katrina: A Synthesis and Preliminary Suggestions for Improvement

Characterization of Supply Chains Power Point Presentation

Characterization of Supply Chains Poster Presentation

Considering Convergence Power Point Presentation

Research team awarded Human and Social Dynamics grant from NSF - more information coming soon

Questions about DRC's contribution in this study can be directed to:

Dr. Tricia Wachtendorf
Disaster Research Center
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
Telephone: 302-831-1254
Email: twachten@udel.edu

Updated January 2007

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