Influence of foreign humanitarian assistance/disaster relief in a coastal nation

Abstract

One of the global security challenges the United States faces is disaster coupled with political instability. The U.S. Military‘s ability to rapidly respond to disasters enhances regional and global security and stability. Foreign Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (FHA/DR), increasingly a mission that relies on a significant military component, focuses on the provision of goods and services such as health care, supplies necessary for survival, and infrastructure repair, with the goal of reducing the immediate human suffering. The disaster in this project‘s scenario is catastrophic flooding that occurs in one of Africa‘s most populated and wealthiest countries that threatens the stability and development of West Africa. This project, employing a systems engineering methodology, focuses on the 60 days after the disaster and the requirements to provide this assistance in the form of goods and services. Many system-of-systems architectures were developed to investigate the effectiveness of utilizing a Seabase for the primary delivery of aid. Two simulation tools, SimKit, and STELLA, were used to model and examine these architectures with the former addressing the delivery and throughput concerns while the latter focused on the satisfaction of the population and the limitation of criminal activity. Based on the results of modeling, the team provided recommendations relative to the most effective architectures in influencing the population of this coastal area as well as accomplishing the FHA/DR mission.