Logistics Support System (LSS) for the International Humanitarian Relief Logistics
for the Pan American Health Organization and Six UN Agencies
Responding to Disasters and Saving Lives
When natural or man-made disasters strike, getting the right supplies to the right
location is a matter of life and death. International humanitarian relief organizations
coordinate the distribution of relief supplies and personnel from around the world
to disaster zones. These organizations often operate in areas where the public infrastructure
is badly damaged and electricity, running water and basic services may be completely
disrupted.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), part of the World Health Organization
(WHO), is a leader in providing assistance during these crises. As the heart of
their Humanitarian Supply Management System (SUMA), the Logistics Support System
(LSS) manages the distribution of relief supplies. When PAHO needed an organization
to replace their outdated system, they turned to FMS to create LSS. Deployed in
2005, LSS has been used in dozens of disaster zones in over 100 countries. Training
is managed through PAHO and the UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(UNOCHA).
Managing the Logistics of Humanitarian Relief Supplies
The volume of disaster relief supplies poses serious logistical problems for national
authorities. PAHO needed an easily deployed and intuitive system for managing supplies
throughout their arrival, warehousing and final distribution lifecycle. The system
also needed to aggregate data from stock and pipeline supplies in order to provide
a high level view for inventory management and planning.
In addition to logistics management capabilities, PAHO needed to ensure transparency
and accountability throughout the supply chain. All stakeholders, including donors,
national disaster coordinators, non-governmental organizations and government officials,
needed to be confident that supplies were being managed properly and distributed
correctly.
Creating a Solution in Challenging and Remote Environments
PAHO turned to FMS to create a system that is easily deployed and reliable in challenging
environments and that often must run on substandard hardware. Assessing local needs,
FMS created a solution that works on individual PCs, local area networks, and across
the Internet while supporting future enhancements and extensibility.
We chose the Microsoft .NET platform to develop the Windows desktop and ASP.NET
web application components of the system, which we built on a common business layer
architecture, and Microsoft SQL Server for the database server. This allows PAHO
to tailor deployments of the system as dictated by each disaster effort's unique
environment. PAHO can mix and match desktop and browser-based instances of the application
in a single warehouse so that older computers can simply connect to the warehouse
web server using the ASP.NET browser-based application and newer machines can run
the richer Windows-based desktop version of LSS.
Key Features
- User friendly UI to make system use and training easy
- Inventory tracking
- A common classification system for goods tracked by PAHO, UNICEF and the World Health
Organization
- Rich reporting and business intelligence
- Aggregation of data from distributed warehouse systems to the United Nations Joint
Logistics headquarters system