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HKU IDS Scholar Seminar Series #15:

Efficiency versus Accuracy: the Optimal Level of Decentralization in Humanitarian Operations for Sudden-Onset Disasters

Title: Efficiency versus Accuracy: the Optimal Level of Decentralization in Humanitarian Operations for Sudden-Onset Disasters
Speaker: Dr Wenjie HUANG, Research Assistant Professor, HKU IDS & Department of Data and Systems Engineering
Date: March 24, 2025
Time: 10:30am – 11:30am

Venue: IDS Seminar Room, P603, Graduate House / Zoom 
Mode: Hybrid. Seats for on-site participants are limited. A confirmation email will be sent to participants who have successfully registered.

Abstract

Humanitarian organizations (HOs) face operational challenges during sudden-onset disasters, such as constraints on staff, storage, and transportation, delaying critical donations to people in need (PIN). These inefficiencies create a trade-off: centralized operations enable accurate demand estimation but face bottlenecks, while decentralized donations, where individual donors distribute supplies based on preferences, offer faster responses but risk supply-demand mismatches. To address this, we propose a model that partially decentralizes humanitarian operations while accounting for random demand. In the deterministic case, the optimal decentralization level reduces to a one-dimensional piecewise-linear convex optimization problem, enabling a novel algorithm to find all solutions efficiently. We prove that the objective function has at most 3n + 2 pieces, leading to an improved O(n)-complexity algorithm for n affected zones. These results extend to the stochastic case, accommodating |Ω| demand scenarios with complexity O(|Ω|n). We derive closed-form expressions for the optimal decentralization level, facilitating detailed comparative analyses. Our model effectively incorporates demand uncertainty, donor preferences, and fairness considerations, all of which can be efficiently addressed using the proposed algorithms. As a case study, we apply this framework to early-stage humanitarian aid distribution in Ukraine during the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War. Results show that partial decentralization, when HO efficiency discounts are high, is nearly three times more effective than full centralization. A 33% decentralization level can reduce demand shortage costs by up to 80% compared to full decentralization via postal services. This highlights the potential of partial decentralization in improving disaster relief operations.

Speaker

Dr Wenjie HUANG
Research Assistant Professor @ HKU IDS & DASE
Dr. Wenjie Huang is Research Assistant Professor in HKU IDS & the Department of Data and Systems Engineering, The University of Hong Kong. He received Ph.D. degree from the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management, National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2019 and B.S. degree in the Department of Industrial Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China in 2014. Prior to joining HKU, he held joint postdoc positions at School of Data Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Group for Research in Decision Analysis (GERAD), Quebec, Canada. His research projects have been supported by NSFC research funds, NRF Singapore and NUS Young Investigator Award.

For full biography of Dr. HUANG, please refer to: https://datascience.hku.hk/people/wenjie-huang/

Moderator

Prof. Yi Ma
Director; Professor, Chair of Artificial Intelligence @ HKU IDS & Department of Computer Science 

Professor Yi Ma is a Chair Professor in the Musketeers Foundation Institute of Data Science (HKU IDS) and Department of Computer Science at the University of Hong Kong. He took up the Directorship of HKU IDS on January 12, 2023. He is also a Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published about 60 journal papers, 120 conference papers, and three textbooks in computer vision, generalized principal component analysis, and high-dimensional data analysis. 

Professor Ma’s research interests cover computer vision, high-dimensional data analysis, and intelligent systems. For full biography of Professor Ma, please refer to: https://datascience.hku.hk/people/yi-ma/

For information, please contact:
Email: datascience@hku.hk