Optimization of humanitarian relief supply chain reliability: a case study of the Ya’an earthquake

This article seeks to propose a mathematical method to optimize the reliability of the humanitarian relief supply chain. Reliability and cost are both important in response to the disasters. To optimize the reliability of humanitarian relief supply chain and to find a trade-off between the reliability and cost, this article establishes a reliability integrated optimization model for the humanitarian relief supply chain and investigates the methods for optimizing the coordination between flow quantity and unit reliability, optimizes the allocation of reliability for each unit, to optimize the total reliability and cost of the humanitarian relief supply chain. To make the results of this article more applicable, this article applies a case study of the Ya’an earthquake to the built model and subsequently proves the related conclusions subsequently. These theoretical results can be used to improve the disaster operations efficiency of the humanitarian relief supply in the crisis state, achieve a win–win situation between the total reliability and cost.