A cost effective and sustainable relief material supply visibility system for devastated areas

In this paper, we propose a cost effective and sustainable relief material visibility system. In an evacuation site such as the one prepared following a disastrous event such as the Tohoku earthquake, we have observed three issues on relief goods supply management: discrepancy between demands and supplies, difficulty of sorting and picking of relief material, and storage strategy to maintain optimal capacity and delivery time. To ease these issues, we developed a system which supports fulfillment by product category. Also, we implemented the system as an 'evacuee support mode' of a traceability system to share both software and hardware assets. By deploying as a dual-mode system, the system can be cost-effective and sustainable. We have developed a prototype system alongside with an agricultural ecommerce system with traceability support. We deployed the prototype at a disaster drill session to gauge the effectiveness of the design.