In this webinar recording, Professor Gyöngyi Kovacs from Hanken School of Economics draw on her recent research titled ‘Inter-sectoral preparedness and mitigation for networked risks and cascading effects’, to showcase how humanitarian relief is provided and explore the logistical concepts and principles that are applied in humanitarian operations.
The webinar recording considers the importance of supply chain management and logistics management during aid operations.
Disasters have been known to disrupt lives and livelihoods. Part of a government’s remit is to assess risks to society as well as to assign different, often specialised, agencies to address those risks.
One consequence of such specialisation is the increase in interagency dependency, networked risks and the cascading effects of events. It is therefore necessary to assess and develop disaster risk reduction more comprehensively than previously and from the inter-sectoral or interagency perspective, taking into account all the actors involved.
In an empirical study involving energy, healthcare and water services, 3 sectors vital to Finnish residents’ wellbeing, we aim to contribute to the body of knowledge regarding interconnected risks and cross-sectoral cascades. We do this by investigating the vulnerabilities in preparedness that may exacerbate inter-sectoral cascades as well as by answering how these vulnerabilities can be addressed.
Professor Gyöngyi Kovács, Hanken School of Economics
Gyöngyi Kovács is the Erkko Professor in Humanitarian Logistics and is the Subject Head of Supply Chain Management and Social Responsibility at the Hanken School of Economics, in Helsinki, Finland.
She is a founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management (JHLSCM) and is on the editorial board of several other journals, including Production and Operations Management, and the Journal of Operations Management.
She led the Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Research Institute (HUMLOG Institute), Hanken School of Economics since its establishment in 2008 until 2014.
She has published extensively in the areas of humanitarian logistics and sustainable supply chain management and is currently leading the EU project HERoS on the COVID-19 response.
