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As a logistician in an emergency operation your job is to deliver humanitarian aid to affected populations in the fastest, most efficient and safest way. Taking decisions on the best use transport assets is one of your skills. But when bridges are down and roads are blocked by floods, hostile military checkpoints or landmines how do you reach cut-off areas?

How do you get the information you need to make these decisions? A key task in logistics coordination is to put together information from all responders about the constantly-changing conditions of access routes. As logisticians face blocked roads they report back to colleagues in other organisations and find ways around the problem. The government and military give updates on inaccessible areas or dangerous zones affected by conflict.

Now with the launch of the SDI... READ MORE

A deserted military base in the southern tip of Italy became a makeshift hub for coordinating relief supplies for earthquake-affected populations in ‘Brinland’ – a fictional country in the scenario used by the Global Logistics Cluster to train logistics officers from around the world on how to assess the need for a Logistics Cluster activation and be part of a Logistics Cluster response team.

The Logistics Response Team (LRT) training, from 22-29 Nov, was the sixth in the series of trainings run by WFP’s Logistics Development Unit based around real-time response to an earthquake. Twenty staff from NGOs and UN agencies formed two inter-agency teams ‘deployed’ at the onset of the emergency to conduct a rapid logistics assessment and coordinate the logistics response on behalf of the humanitarian community. A team of experienced facilitators drawn from NGOs and UN agencies operating in humanitarian emergencies played the part of government, humanitarian actors and donors, to... READ MORE