Local Capacity Building: A Logistics Perspective in Disaster Relief

With the growing number of natural and social crisis in recent years, and the main impact being on countries with poor social and physical infrastructure, as part of the bigger aim of humanitarian sector in helping communities develop, building local capacities becomes an important issue to consider. Considering logistics taking up more than three fourth of relief operations, the purpose of this paper is to connect local capacity building (LCB) to the logistics realm in disaster relief. A systematic review of literature was made to reach a definition framework for LCB and to link it with logistics in a disaster relief setting. Based on the keywords found from this literature review, a conceptual framework for LCB projects was developed.
The definitions given for capacity building differ from context to context. This paper, first conducting a topical review on these different contexts, presents a systematic definition for LCB, and connects it with humanitarian logistics. The systematic approach, taken in defining LCB, depicted people as glue behind the concept followed by a number of keywords. Further, the suggested conceptual framework sets achievable milestones for practitioners to reach sustainable capacity, leading to mitigation in logistics cost in the response phase of disaster relief, and reducing the perceived disaster risk by the people.