Towards designing and implementing an empirically grounded research for humanitarian logistics after nepal earthquake

Hossein Baharmand, Tina Comes, Matthieu Lauras

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volumeConference contributionScientificpeer-review

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Abstract

Purpose This paper proposes a research design for effective use of qualitative data from field research in a quantitative analysis of humanitarian logistics. Design/methodology/approach Our research design is composed of qualitative and quantitative components. The qualitative part has four steps: preparation, data collection, data combination and analysis, and interpretation. We triangulate qualitative data through semi-structured interviews, observations, document review, and online surveys. We use frequency analysis to map out qualitative data to themes that were identified through literature review and best practices. After combining data from various sources, we apply content analysis and then interpret the findings. Findings The results of implementing our research design for Nepal case show its effectiveness for capturing the complexities of and the relation between variables in disasters. Its workflow and research methods exclusively enable using field insights to test theories, inform models, and find field driven research directions. We demonstrate these findings through examples from our field research after 2015 Nepal earthquake. Research limitations/implications (if applicable) Limitations: our disaster field research was constrained by the typical short time to prepare/conduct the research, lack of access to key informant and, limited sample size. Furthermore, the results of our research are based on one case. Implications: our research design resulted in an effective and a traceable use of field data for addressing challenges that practitioners were experiencing. Therefore, proposed research design can be adopted in future for conducting and empirically grounded research on HL. Practical implications (if applicable) Proposed research design enables developing field informed models that can be used as a decision support system in the immediate response. Original/value In this paper, we explicitly explain how we translated Nepal field work into a model and what the problems were in such settings.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of 29th Annual NOFOMA conference
Pages1-16
Number of pages16
Publication statusPublished - 2017
EventAnnual NOFOMA conference 2017 - Lund, Sweden
Duration: 8 Jun 20179 Jun 2017
Conference number: 29

Conference

ConferenceAnnual NOFOMA conference 2017
Country/TerritorySweden
CityLund
Period8/06/179/06/17

Keywords

  • Humanitarian logistics
  • Field research design
  • 2015 Nepal earthquake

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