Teaching

Humanitarian Operations Analytics MBA Seminar

Humanitarian organizations manage complex operations while dealing with extreme uncertainty, scarce budgets and the need for fast and equitable service to prevent and alleviate human suffering. Data analytics can inform decision-making in humanitarian operations by facilitating activities ranging from aid-network planning to last-mile distribution of aid and information management.

MBA students in this course study key components of humanitarian operations from an analytics perspective. The course discusses the following humanitarian topics:

• Humanitarian principles and the disaster management cycle

• Humanitarian networks, aid prepositioning, and social equity

• Demand planning, forecasting, and the Bullwhip Effect

• Local and international humanitarian response

• Funding, donations analytics, and different types of aid

• Coordination of disaster response and development operations

• Transportation, logistics, and last-mile distribution

• Volunteer management

• Information management, social media analytics, AI

• Business and humanitarian settings and course summary

Humanitarian Operations Management Ph.D. Seminar

This doctoral course introduces PhD students to research on humanitarian operations (HOPE) management. This well-recognized research area receives attention from mainstream journals in operations management, operations research and management science. Students will:

• Develop a conceptual map of extant HOPE research

• Illustrate the use of research methods in HOPE

• Identify research opportunities in HOPE

• Stimulate students’ research ideas through paper discussions and the writing of a research proposal

• Provide the foundations for constructive peer reviewing and practice peer reviewing