An empirical analysis of humanitarian warehouse locations

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically verify characteristics of current warehouse locations of humanitarian organizations (based on public information) and to relate those to the model developed by Richardson et al. (2016). Design/methodology/approach: This paper is based on desk research. Public data such as (annual) reports and databases are used to empirically verify location characteristics. Findings: A significant portion of our sample co-locates their products at UNHRD premises. This indicates that organizations prefer to cluster warehouse activities, particularly when there is no fee involved for using the warehouse (as is the case in the UNHRD network). We find that the characteristics of the current warehouse locations are aligned with literature on location selection factors. Current location can be characterized by infrastructure characteristics (in particular closeness to airport and safety) and by low occurrence of disasters. Other factors for which we did not find evidence for were labor quality and availability as well as political environment. Research limitations/implications: We have used a limited sample of warehouses. We also focused our research on the countries where two or more organizations have their warehouses located. We did not account for warehouse sizes or product stored in our analysis. Practical implications: The geographic map of the current warehouses together with the quantified location factors provides an overview of current warehouse locations. Originality/value: We empirically verify characteristics of warehouse locations of humanitarian organizations. This differs from other studies that do not provide an empirically grounded perspective