Locating backup facilities to enhance supply chain disaster resilience

The use of emergency backup and storage facilities to supplement existing facilities in response to the potential effects of various natural and anthropogenic hazards (e.g., floods, fires, outages, and acts of malice) can be an effective way of reducing vulnerability and enhancing the resilience of supply chain and other logistics functions. Although there can be additional costs associated with utilizing emergency backup and storage facilities, they can be a particularly attractive and cost-effective alternative in those cases where long-term disruptions can, or should, be expected. In this paper we use set cover location modeling as a decision to determine the number of backup facilities to locate under varying cover, anticover, and complementary anticover distances. We then add the flexibility of allowing existing facilities to serve as backup facilities and explore the interrelationships among hazards, vulnerability, and location. Finally, these model formulations are applied to an example data set over 900 cities and towns in New England and New York. © Journal compilation © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc