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From 9/11 to Fukushima: The Science of Donated Stuff
Humanitarian Logistics Expert and Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute Professor Jose Holguín-Veras Impacted
Personally, Professionally by Terrorist Attacks on Sept. 11,
2001
For years, Jose Holguín-Veras had a ritual. Prior to each
and every monthly meeting with colleagues and former students
on the 82nd floor of the World Trade Center Tower 1, he would
stop and buy a hot mocha at a coffee shop on the ground
level.
Even today, 10 years after the terrorist attacks on Sept.
11, 2001, shook the world and destroyed the Twin Towers, the
smell of hot mocha brings Holguín-Veras
back to those meetings with state and city transportation
officials. Among the ranks of these officials were a handful of
his former students from Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute. They would meet to discuss Holguín-Veras’
ongoing transportation research, new transportation
initiatives, and other topics. On the day of the tragedy, most
of his colleagues in Tower 1 escaped with their lives.
Beyond the personal impact of the terrorist attacks,
Holguín-Veras was one of several Rensselaer professors tasked
with studying and learning from the aftermath of the tragedy.
His research projects started with air travel, but took an
unexpected turn to a topic entirely new to academia: the
logistics of donations.
Within a few months after Sept. 11, 2001, Holguín-Veras
launched an investigation into the disaster’s large-scale
effects on American attitudes toward air travel. Leading a
study for the National Science Foundation
(NSF), his research team took to airports across the country
and collected massive amounts of data and interviews. One of
their key findings was a direct connection between security
lines and the number of flyers: the longer a passenger had to
spend waiting in a line at the airport, the more likely he or
she was to drive instead of fly for their next trip.
“We found that given a choice to travel by car or plane, an
individual’s decision is highly influenced by airport
inspection times,” said Holguín-Veras, the William Howard Hart
Professor in the Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering at Rensselaer, and director of
the university’s Center for Infrastructure,
Transportation, and the Environment. “If you are picked to
receive a random inspection, the stress of your overall air
travel experience raises by a factor of four. Getting
inspected, even if you are doing absolutely nothing wrong, is
mentally taxing. So in general, the longer the inspection time,
the less inclined we are to use air as a means of travel.”
About five months after the terrorist attacks, Holguín-Veras
received an email that would forever change the trajectory of
his academic career. In February 2002, a friend sent him a
magazine story about a warehouse in northern New Jersey that
housed $75 million worth of goods donated in the wake of the
disaster. The problem, however, was that most of this donated
stuff was unusable — everything from wedding dresses to expired
medicine to children’s squirt guns. And for the little that was
usable, there was no system, network, or infrastructure in
place to get that stuff to those people who needed it. So the
stuff just sat in a warehouse until someone with a lot of time
and ample resources could figure out what to do with it.
The story floored Holguín-Veras. The problem and challenge
also spoke to his inner engineer. “For the first time in my
life, I saw the possibility that donations could be a bad
thing,” he said. “It was the genesis of my interest and
involvement in the study of donations logistics and materials
convergence.”
Today, 10 years later, Holguín-Veras is the leading
international authority on the topic. His team, supported by
the NSF and other federal agencies, is academia’s largest group
dedicated to the study of humanitarian logistics.
It’s not a topic for the faint of heart. Following any major
disaster, the first response is search and rescue to help find
trapped survivors and minimize human casualties. This is
followed by the first phase of recovery: determining what
critical supplies are needed — usually water, food, and medical
supplies — and establishing a supply chain to deliver those
goods to people in need. Spontaneous social networks emerge in
the absence of conventional supply chains. These networks,
often centering on religious organizations and nonprofits local
to the affected region, have a rich knowledge of the regional
population and are generally in a strong position to help.
To get good, meaningful data requires Holguín-Veras and team
to visit the site as soon as possible following the disaster.
The list is cringe-inducing. He’s been all over the Midwest,
visiting small towns in the days following major tornados. In
2005, Holguín-Veras was in New Orleans after the levee failed
due to Hurricane Katrina. In early 2010, he was in
Port-au-Prince a week after Haiti was ravaged by a major
earthquake. Most recently, he was in northeastern Japan,
surveying the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake, tsunami,
and resulting nuclear reactor crisis.
In each situation, Holguín-Veras and team were on hand to
take careful inventory of the relief policies, procedures,
preparations, and infrastructure in place. Their goal is to
help analyze what went right, and what could be improved upon
in preparation for future disasters. Additionally,
Holguín-Veras looks at donations, donation patterns, and how
donated money is used. He feels strongly that monetary
donations to trusted relief organizations are far superior to
donating physical goods — which stress the relief supply chain
and, while well intentioned, lead to logistical
difficulties.
Far from wanting to discourage donations, Holguín-Veras said
he is trying to streamline the logistics behind the convergence
of relief goods. His team uses collected data to refine
advanced mathematical formulas at the heart of disaster relief
supply chains. These formulas inform software tools that allow
governments and first responders to forecast and assess what
critical supplies will be needed, and to create mechanisms for
controlling the flow of donated non-critical supplies to
affected areas.
It’s certainly no vacation to visit disaster sites, but
Holguín-Veras said he is driven to continue this line of
research because it offers him the opportunity to make a direct
impact in people’s lives.
“Of all the different things I study, I consider disaster
research to be the most important by far. There are other areas
of research that are far less stressful and generate far more
funding. But what we do here could mean the difference between
life and death, or the difference between massive suffering and
less suffering,” he said. “Knowing that our work could save
lives is what keeps me going.”
For more information about Holguín-Veras’ research at
Rensselaer, visit:
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Published
September 7,
2011 |
Contact: Michael Mullaney
Phone: (518) 276-6161
E-mail: mullam@rpi.edu |
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