Improving Humanitarian Operations through Technology-Enabled Collaboration

Humanitarian supply chains involve many different entities, such as government, military, private, and non-governmental organizations and individuals. Well-coordinated interactions between entities can lead to synergies and improved humanitarian outcomes. Information technology (IT) tools can help facilitate collaboration, but cost and other barriers have limited their use. We document the use of an IT tool to improve last-mile supply distribution and data management in one of many camps for internally displaced persons after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and we describe other current uses of technology in camp management. Motivated by these examples and the interest among humanitarian organizations in expanding the use of such tools to facilitate coordination, we introduce a cooperative game theory model and explore insights about the conditions under which multi-agency coordination is feasible and desirable. We also outline an agenda for future research in the area of technology-enabled collaboration in the humanitarian sector.