10. Collaborative Emergency Supply Chains for Essential Goods and Services

Focal actors in disaster relief logistics are predominantly public authorities, emergency organizations, and NGOs, whereas private firms rather play a subordinate role—at least in the context of direct crisis intervention. Although it is entirely clear that engaging in public crisis management is not among the original tasks of commercial firms there is a substantial—and so far still unexploited—potential for public–private cooperation in a disaster situation. In this contribution, we outline the scope of a Public–Private Emergency Collaboration (PPEC) with a focus on the provision of essential goods and services. We discuss the different objectives and strategies of the partners and evaluate the potential for a PPEC for each phase of a disaster from an economic perspective with a primary focus on logistics operations. Based on a simple model, we identify the chance to improve crisis management operations by information sharing and coordinated allocation of resources and capacities for both the escalating and de-escalating phase of a disaster. Interestingly, a PPEC can also help to overcome public acceptance problems which could be occasionally observed in historic disasters. As key requirements of a PPEC, we identify a clear allocation of responsibilities between the public and the private partners together with sufficient incentives for commercial firms to engage in a PPEC on a sustainable basis.