- Thank you for joining us on CTL's "Supply Chain Frontiers". I'm Lauren Finegan, a research associate in the MIT Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab, which is part of the Center for Transportation and Logistics at MIT.

- Hi, I'm Tim Russell, research engineer at the Center for Transportation Logistics in the Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab. Today we're gonna be talking about disaster response, and especially how the public and private sectors can come together for the most effective logistical responses in the wake of a disaster. For this conversation, we're talking to Kathy Fulton, who serves as the Executive director of the American Logistics Aid Network, otherwise known as ALAN. Kathy, it's a pleasure to have you with us.

- Thanks for inviting me, Tim. Glad to be here.

- Why don't we start by asking you to tell us a little bit about the American Logistics Aid Network and the work that you do.

- Sure, so American Logistics Aid Network, or ALAN, is a nonprofit organization that was formed by the industry associations. It happened, really, right after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a group of industry professionals were together at a conference. They saw everything that was happening along the Gulf Coast, and realized that it was really a logistics problem. There was actually quite a bit of frustration that as supply chain professionals, we could move widgets around the world within a day, but it was a challenge just to get food and basic necessities to the Superdome. So a group came together, and that's how we got our start. Since that time, we've really been active in just about every disaster that has occurred here in the United States. Some of the work that we do really centers around helping nonprofit organizations connect with donated or discounted logistics services for their response efforts. As we were doing that, we realized, hey, if we want these businesses to help nonprofits, we've gotta ensure that those businesses themselves stay in business. So that led to us really working towards providing businesses with the right types of information. And as we were doing that, we realized that, hey, we're collecting a lot of information from businesses about how they're responding during disasters. And so, we've, since, really after 2017, and Harvey, Irma and Maria turned that into helping government, especially FEMA, understand what's happening with private sector supply chains during disaster response. So we do all kinds of things. We coordinate those logistics solutions. We convene, we bring people together. We do a little bit of education because who doesn't love education around? If we weren't learning and sharing that knowledge, what good would it be? And then that information management really helping to get that information pushed out to the various communities.

- Thanks, Kathy. Where are you active now in disasters, or where have you been active recently in supporting disasters through ALAN?

- Yeah, that's a great question, Lauren, thanks for asking. It feels like there's a new disaster happening every single day. Earlier this year, we responded to tornadoes across the South central area and southeast. The flooding, just this crazy flooding that happened in California. And then last year, probably the biggest event we've had in a few years was Hurricane Ian, and just responding to the needs in Southwest Florida. Like I said, it feels like there's something going on every single day, and whether we're preparing for, actively responding, or helping someone recover from a disaster, that just the work never stops.

- Hey, Kathy, could you say a little bit about Operation BBQ and the work you did with them after Hurricane Ian?

- Yeah, they're really interesting nonprofit organization. They provide feeding support for both first responders and disaster survivors. And so, there were a couple of really interesting things that they needed. They buy all of their food in mass quantities, or get it donated in a lot of cases. So we were helping them with the transportation from the producers, whether it was corn coming from the Midwest, or there's a bread factory that was sharing some frozen rolls. And really, we were helping them with all those inbound logistics activities, just so that they could then have the resources there to set up their huge kitchen and cook delicious, hot meals. They call it the one hot meal that matters. The really interesting thing about that is we've built such a great relationship with them that earlier this spring, I got a call at two o'clock on a Friday afternoon. Just kind of this frantic call saying, "Hey, we have this fabulous donation of six truckloads of pork butts, but we have to have it in a, we have to be able to accept it by Monday morning." And that's almost unheard of, right? In the logistics world, things tend to shut down sometimes early afternoon on Fridays. And so, I'm like, "I don't know, but we're gonna put the word out." And within two hours, we had actually found a warehouse space in Dallas for them. And it's just an amazing story, because not only did that food get rescued, it meant that sometime later this year when they cook, and they're gonna have to cook and they have been cooking, half a million people are gonna have a delicious, hot meal that matters simply because a warehouse said, "Yeah, we can take that stuff. It's no problem for us, it's a few pallet positions, and maybe a little bit of logistics, but it's doing a lot of good."

- Yeah, I absolutely love that story. I tell it all the time, and when someone asks me what ALAN does or how we're involved. So when you put it in the context of how many people will be served, I think that's just, it's amazing.

- Yeah.

- So that's a great example of connecting the donation with a space that can handle it on the logistics side. How does ALAN broadly think about making those connections and ensure that the private sector actors are connected with the right organizations during a disaster, and in this example, kind of blue sky times, if you will?

- Yeah, so there's an old adage, you never wanna exchange business cards at a disaster. And we ascribe to that, absolutely. We do a whole lot to help build relationships, build trust before a disaster happens. But we also know that that battle buddy mentality, and I kind of hate that analogy, but it's a true one in that, hey, if we can work together to solve a common challenge, especially during a disaster, I'm gonna have a stronger bond, I'm gonna have a stronger emotional connection with that person. So we can do all we want to introducing people. And Tim and Lauren, you guys have both been so helpful with the calls that we have, where we bring the private sector actors together, and just get them together when a disaster's not happening. But we also know that when they can work together, they can solve that problem together, it's gonna drive something in them to want to do that again and again and again. So that's an actually an example of kind of private-private activities coming together. We also do work, private-public kind of activities. You're both very involved in the SCAN, Supply Chain Analysis Network work. You guys have the hard job of actually looking at the data and trying to figure out what it means. I get the easy job of talking to people and saying, "Hey, does all this analysis that the smart folks at MIT did, does this make sense to you in your business?" So that's kind of also something where we're able to use those conversations, help share information with the private sector. And then that information gets reflected back to government officials to help with their decision making. So it's building those connections, it's the give and take of relationships. So it's also kind of an interesting perspective on how information flow really aids with relationships.

- Yeah, and I think even back to the early days of COVID, when we were all learning about supply chains because of the challenges of getting food on the table. And so, I think that's a really great way to recognize those individuals, because I have to imagine that is what helps drive people to continue to work with ALAN. So I'm curious what you hear from people in a disaster, before a disaster about why they're engaged.

- Yeah, it's really interesting when we ask people, "Hey, what is important to you, why are you doing this?" The number one answer we always get is, "It's the right thing to do." There's a community mindedness to it. We do have a few who are honest with us and say, Hey, "We see a brand opportunity here." I've had a couple of them say that to me, right? "It's our business." But mostly, the people who are doing it are not making money off of it, for sure, right? This is just a way for them to give back to their communities. It's a way to do something using their expertise. It's using the stuff that they do every single day to make money for their businesses, to make a difference in the world. And I think that that's what resonates with people. It's like, "Oh, I can move a widget and somebody's gonna enjoy playing with that widget. Or I can move food and somebody's gonna have a meal tonight." So, I think that connecting it to my day job. Being able to say, "Hey, this is something that I do, and maybe I don't feel like it, makes a huge difference every single day. But I know during a disaster, I know that what I'm doing is making a difference. I think that people appreciate that.

- If there's people out there that are interested in helping in a disaster, what can they do or how could they connect with you to be able to do that good that you're talking about?

- Well, they can offer up their services, their transportation, their warehousing, their material handling equipment. They can do that on our website, alanaid.org. Reach out to us, we're always happy to add more people. We're pre-positioning those relationships. And instead of pre-positioning supplies, we're pre-positioning those services. So alanaid.org is gonna be the best way to reach us. And then we'll just take it from there. We wanna help people do the good that they wanna do. We wanna get them engaged in the geography with the services, helping the people that they wanna help. We want it to be a win-win, win, win, win all the way around.

- So you mentioned, this is pivoting a little bit, but you mentioned earlier about the information sharing aspect of what ALAN does and how you realized you were getting a lot of information in, and the value of that information for your partners and stakeholders. Can you talk a little bit about the supply chain intelligence center?

- Yeah, so our supply chain intelligence center is a partnership with a group called Everstream Analytics. And it's, honestly, it's one of those back of the napkin bar conversations that happened very early in COVID, actually about March 12th of 2020. Where we're sitting around going, "This is crazy. Every governor, every mayor has decided to implement all of these different non-pharmaceutical interventions." Whether it's a curfew, or you have to wear personal protective equipment, or truck drivers can't go into businesses, whatever that is, it's gonna cause friction in the supply chain. And so, we needed a way to track that. Well, Everstream's platform is GIS based. And so, we were able to take every major city and every county in the United States and map them, and track every NPI that was in place. So at one point in time, it was 160,000 data points or something that were getting refreshed every 24 to 48 hours. Now we're using it primarily to look at all of the weather data that's out there. We are just starting to add events like civil unrest. The event that happened in Philadelphia with the bridge collapse. And what happens is you can see all of the infrastructure in the United States, you can see ports and airports and major intersections, the top 100 supply chain bottlenecks, you can see all of those. And you can see what may be disrupting them at any point in time. It's free, right? Everstream has just been really generous, and anybody who wants to sign up for that can do so. I was at a nonprofit conference a couple of weeks ago, and someone walked up to me and said, "I look at your map every single day. It was a food bank. We're moving food out to our partner food pantries every single day. I wanna know what the weather looks like on those routes. I wanna know what my truck drivers are gonna be facing, so that if they're departing our facility at eight o'clock in the morning and not delivering till two o'clock in the afternoon, what's the weather gonna look like at two o'clock in the afternoon, do they need to reschedule that delivery?" So it's been really fun to know that it's making an impact on daily lives. It wasn't just a COVID thing, but people are still using it.

- So I was looking at the ALAN, I pulled up the ALAN webpage, and I saw the information on Super Typhoon Mawar. And I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about if you were involved in any response for Super Typhoon Mawar, and if you can talk a little bit more and more about how a response to an OCONUS or outside of the contiguous United States disaster is different than a disaster within the contiguous United States. So, I think about Puerto Rico, Hurricanes Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017, as well as recently, Super Typhoon Mawar.

- Yeah, so I'll talk a little bit about our work, and then I'll talk about how just response is different when you get into an island situation. So for ALAN, we're primarily working domestic, US, lower 48, let's say, activities. But what we find is that a lot of our partners who are based here in the lower 48 want to respond. And so, they need that first mile logistics support. Whether that is a place to stage their supplies, a warehouse to stage it near a port, or transportation to that port or airport. So we are going to get involved with that. The reason we activated for Typhoon Mawar is because we weren't sure what that was gonna look like. We needed to be ready in case any of our partners decided that they're gonna ship stuff. It hasn't happened yet, that doesn't mean it won't. Recovery is a long process, right? And the damage that was done from Mawar with the floods and winds, they're gonna need support for quite some time. So the second part of the question you asked, Lauren, is how does that differ? Well, boats get involved and planes get involved, right? And we don't do a whole lot with that, we have some amazing partners who do ocean and air transport. But anytime you are constrained by the ways in which you can get supplies to an area, that's gonna complicate your response efforts. And you guys know this far better than me, but it just reduces your options, right? Especially in Guam with Mawar, where they don't grow most of their resources, right? They don't grow most of their food, most of it's coming from somewhere else, whether that's Asia Pacific or the West Coast of the United States. So it takes a long time to get there, right? It has to go by boat, it has to go by plane. Even by plane, it's a, I don't even know for, if you're sending something from Seattle, how long does that take? Hours and hours and hours, right? So when you talk about the logistics and the response to island situations or remote situations where you're cut off from land-based transportation options, that's just gonna complicate matters because it limits your ability to move a lot of things. You can't take trains, you can't take trucks. And boats and airplanes only have so much capacity, and so many landing slots, and and, and, and, and it just so is a ripple effect of how much you can push through. This is where the critical node analysis that your team is working on is so important. It's gonna help us all better understand why those nodes are critical and what the throughput is for them.

- When you first started talking about ALAN activating in response to the storm in Guam, you mentioned something that I think that is also really important. Not just the critical node pieces, but you mentioned that you were activated to see what you didn't know, to see about the demands that were there. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that importance of connecting that supply and the demand pieces.

- Yeah, I'm constantly having to remind people that you don't wanna ship something if nobody needs it, right, 'cause it's just gonna cause a problem. So being very demand focused. Modern commercial supply chains, for the most part, are demand focused, right? There are still places where we're trying to create a market with a product, but we wanna respond to what's really needed. So we're constantly asking our partners. We have a couple of organizations we work with who do have members on the ground, they have all come through fine. But understanding, hey, what are the needs? Because if we're sending things that you don't need, then it becomes a waste problem. And an island like Guam, there's no excess place to put that. We saw this problem in Puerto Rico after Irma and Maria with plastic water bottles, right? So much water was sent over, and there's a whole other story about that. But it was because there was no true understanding of what was really and truly needed. So thinking about that, working with our partners, talking to people who are as local as possible. And then once our response partners are on the ground, understanding from them their situational awareness. Having those conversations with them so we can say, this is not necessarily something where we need to get involved, or yes, we absolutely need to get involved.

- I also like how during disasters, these conversations that we have with ALAN and the associations in the private sector, you're able to complete that loop and let the federal government understand the needs of the private sector. It's a different set of supply and demand, but what does the private sector need to be able to stand back up?

- Oh yeah. I'm gonna say something more about Mawar first, and then I wanna talk about that a little bit. Because with Mawar, when we did ask our association partner, "Hey, what do your members need?" The response we got back, and it was a logistics company who said, "What we need is more freight to move. We're open, right, we're in business. Just tell us what you need moved, and connect us to the federal government and other organizations who can help us make money." Which is great, I'm not knocking that at all. But it was very obvious that recovery was well underway for that organization. So, yeah, when you think about the things that businesses need, oftentimes they relate in some way to supply chain activities. They need debris cleared, or in the case of Philadelphia, I hate to keep going back to that, or they need a bridge rebuilt, right? Or they need power so that they can get their factory back up and running so that they can produce those critical items rather than government having to bring in the short term relief items, right? And it's understanding things, really, as an ecosystem. And understanding that things that were provided by private sector before a disaster should, to the extent possible, continue to be provided by private sector after disaster. The national academy's report that the humanitarian supply chain lab did a lot of work on back in 2018, 2019, 2020, really showed that restoration of those preexisting supply chains is the best way to serve communities after disaster. But if government who is controlling some of the restoration priorities is unaware of what they are, then we're at odds. I think that after disaster, we all kind of want the same things. We just have different ideas about how they should happen, right? We want everybody to have nutrition, and hydration, and medical care, but sometimes government thinks that they should be the ones providing it in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. And private sector, both for financial reasons, but also because they're better at it if they've been doing it, they think that they should be the ones doing it. So it's just a matter of, hey, we all want the same thing. Let's have a conversation about it. Let's figure out how we remove barriers so we do what's in the best interest of the community.

- So building on this discussion about government and private sector working together after disaster, in an earlier segment of this podcast, we talked about the role of government during a disaster. And a lot of ALAN's work, or part of ALAN's work at least focuses on bringing together the public and private sectors for an optimal disaster response. Can you talk a little bit about that partnership and how it can realize its full potential?

- Yeah, and I'll go back to something I said about we all want the same things, right? We want people to have nourishment, we want people to have hydration. We want people to have medical care. We want to restore our communities back to where they were previously, or even better. I hope that we want them to be better in a lot of cases. But bringing people together can be a challenge because we are all busy with our day jobs, right? Absent a disaster, we're all running in different directions on our own projects. So how do we stop and think about, okay, what is it that we're gonna ask you for in a disaster? What is private sector going to ask for during a disaster? And it comes down to just a handful of things over and over and over again. They want things so that transportation goes smoother, right? They want those hours of service waivers and weight waivers, and things that are gonna help them respond to the additional demand that they're seeing at the beginning of a disaster. They want things that can help their employees get back to work, and that can be a whole suite of things. In Hurricane Ida in Louisiana, one of the big challenges had to do with fuel. And lots and lots of reasons for that, which I'm sure Tim can elaborate on for hours and hours, right? But the workers in the grocery stores had to wait in line to get fuel. Now, there was fuel, it was slowly being pushed out, but the lines to get it were long. The grocery stores were open either because they had generators or because power had been restored to them. But if you can't staff a grocery store, it doesn't matter how much product is on the shelves, you can't do anything about it. And so, sometimes from a government perspective, is fuel for grocery store workers something that they should be worried about? It's a private sector problem, it's a business problem. It's not really something that that government should ever really be thinking about, except that if you don't get the grocery stores open, it means you have to pass out more meals ready to eat, right? So then you have to calculate what's the expense of helping these workers access fuel versus the expense of me moving meals ready to eat or bottled water to people? So again, looking at things as an ecosystem and understanding what's gonna be best for this community. Is it to do something maybe a little bit out of the norm to help these grocery store workers get access to fuel? Or is it, I'm following my checklist that I've always done. And so, I think that's one of the challenges. That's where I think the conversation needs to center, is really on that common ground. What's best for the survivor, what's best for the community, what is best for everybody's budget, quite honestly, right? 'Cause in the end, it ends up being cheaper if you can help people access food in the way that they've accessed it all along.

- Yeah, I feel like the conversation, at least since we've been in this conversation with ALAN and the government since 2017, it's progressed and it's making progress. When the pandemic first started, we saw this desire to get the right people on the essential workers list, to get truck drivers in there, to get warehouses in there, to get the ability for logistics to flow. We got that push from the private sector, and then we heard the public sector want to listen to this concern, and be able to take it and run with it. The conversation's really improving, right?

- It is, and one of the really interesting things about that is the conversation is actually really improving on the private sector side, amongst themselves. We're talking to lots of different private sector people all the time, and where they can, where they're legally allowed to, and there are exceptions where they can't collaborate. They're figuring out how to come together and have that one voice to say, "Hey, this isn't just a problem with grocery store X or grocery store Y, all of the grocery stores are having this problem." And they're actually, there's mutual support that happens between them. The major grocery store in Texas will ship water to the major grocery store in Florida, and vice versa, during major events. So we're seeing that collaboration, especially when there's not direct competition. But even when there is direct competition, we're seeing those businesses figure out how to work together. When they can come together with one voice and talk to government and say, "Here's the problem." Like at the beginning of COVID when everybody was screaming, "Hey, can't do anything if you don't have truck drivers," I think that that's when the real progress is gonna be made. I hope that we don't have to wait for another pandemic or a major catastrophic event. I'm hopeful for some of the conversations that are happening around the country right now, but it's that agreeing to work together across all sectors that's gonna make a difference.

- So, Kathy, you just mentioned the fuel wholesaler association that did a good job of trying to reach out and bring people in after Hurricane Ida. Who else is doing really good work in this area?

- Yeah, so Energy Marketers Association, right? That team has figured it out, they can do something nationwide. Another group that's really doing interesting things is FMI, the Food Industry Association. They work at the retail store level, and they've started some information sharing initiatives. They've started some education initiatives. They're really figuring out that they wanna take those best practices from their members who have unfortunately learned because of challenges that they've been through, but they wanna make that a standard across all of the members in their association. I really applaud that. I applaud the work that's being done there. I know that there are others who are out there. These are just a couple of examples of groups. I'll also say that we're seeing FEMA trying to be smarter about this as well, right? FEMA really has a desire to listen and learn from private sector. I think that was part of the big push behind Supply Chain Analysis Network, SCAN. Is to really say, "Hey, we know that business, you guys are doing logistics and supply chain every day." FEMA does it a few days a year, hopefully only a few days a year, right? "We wanna stay out of your way, do no harm," as Mr. Dorko says. Jeff Dorko, who leads FEMA's logistics management directorate, is always saying, "Hey, first do no harm. We wanna stay outta business this way." And so, when we're seeing that from government, we hope that it can have an influence across all of the agencies in government. FEMA gets called in to coordinate a lot of things, right? And they are the disaster agency, but there are other groups who have supply chain initiatives happening. From the White House, to Congress, and the Congressional Supply Chain Caucus, wherever it is, we just hope that they are listening to the right partners and listening to the pros, literally the people who do supply chain every day, right? Let us as an industry help inform what those policies end up being.

- As we head into the hurricane season, what are your hopes and your fears?

- Hopes and fears? Hope is not a strategy. So, really, I do hope that it's a quiet season, right? I hope that the models that the weather service and the hurricane center have hold out, and that we have less hurricanes this year. But what I really hope is that people will decide that they wanna get involved if something does happen. That they'll look to the best part of themselves and say, "What is it that I can do that's gonna make a difference and not cause additional problems?" So that's what I hope.

- Yeah, I haven't seen that disaster fatigue play out yet. It seems like people are still willing to help, and people are still willing to reach out and to do for others.

- Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting because we're in this very strange time in logistics and supply chain right now, right? Just really strange time. If you look at the numbers, and the number of loads that are moving, and this kind of, this post pandemic, where what's really happening out there, does that mean that there's more capacity and more opportunities for people to do good, I hope so. I hope that they won't wait till something happens. But you're right, disaster fatigue, we've not seen that, I hope we don't. That's another hope, I don't know. But again, it's not a strategy, so we're still all gonna bust our backsides trying to make sure that people know how they can help.

- So, Kathy, you talked about education. You talked about this information flow and building these connections, maybe you could say a little bit about the Humanitarian Logistics Awards that you guys have.

- Yeah, thanks for asking about our Humanitarian Logistics Awards, or as my team affectionately calls them behind the scenes, our HULAs. So it's something we started back in 2017 or 2018. It's really about recognizing the amazing work that is getting done by supply chain professionals and logisticians to support the advancement of humanitarian activities. So maybe these businesses or individuals that we're recognizing, maybe their primary job isn't humanitarian response, but they've figured out that something about it drives them. There's something that interests them for it. We've been fortunate to recognize the Humanitarians Supply Chain Lab as one of our previous recipients after our work together in 2017 on Harvey, Irma, and Maria. I'm just thrilled that that relationship has just continued to grow and expand. So the awards recognize either businesses, individuals, educators who are just doing good in the world through their skills and expertise and knowledge.

- Yeah, I think that recognition is so important to really, especially in the disaster space, when people a lot of times have their heads down and are constantly responding, to step back and acknowledge that hard work is so important.

- Logistics is, and supply chain are always behind the scenes, right? So, even after we've been through the last three years of the pandemic, where supply chain was in the news every single day, people think that they understand what logistics and supply chain is, but they really don't. And so, we wanna take something that can be seen as a frustration for people who likes to be stuck behind a truck, right, or who likes the noise that happens at the warehouse down the street, right? Those are things that can be nuisances in the community, or seen as nuisances. And what we wanna do is say, "Hey, if it weren't for these things, you wouldn't have food on your table. And oh, by the way, even more so after a disaster, when logistics is everything." The statistics that everybody cites, 60 to 80% of humanitarian spending goes towards logistics, well, we just wanna recognize a little piece of that, right? We want people to know there are people out there, really smart people, really dedicated people who are doing so much good, let's tell the world about them.

- So, Kathy, I'm curious to learn a little bit about you. So in your professional life or elsewhere, what gets you outta bed in the morning? What keeps you running, literally?

- Boy, I wish I were doing a whole lot more running than I am these days. But what gets me out of bed is the opportunity to show love to people, and in practical ways. I often say that I have the absolute best job in the world. I truly believe that because I get to work on a different type of challenge every single day. I never know what my day is gonna look like when I get up in the morning, right? I get to work with really cool people, people who are passionate about what they do, people who are incredibly smart, people who are incredibly dedicated, people who just want to do the right thing. And I would say finally, I know that the work that we're doing makes a difference. I know that, to go back to the Operation BBQ relief example, I know that half a million people are gonna get a hot meal at some point this year just because I took five minutes and made a phone call, right? That's the easy, I have the easy job, right? I just have to make a phone call or send an email, and people respond. So, what gets me outta bed in the morning is the opportunity to live out love in practical ways. And sometimes love is an email, sometimes love is a phone call. But that's what gets me going.

- I love that. So, Kathy, thank you so much for joining us today. Is there anything else you wanna add as we wrap up this conversation?

- Yeah, Lauren, Tim, I just wanna say thank you for all that your team does. It is so much fun to get to work with the two of you, and Jared, and Chelsea, and Charlotte, and everybody else who had the opportunity to hang out with at the cool kids table over the past few years. Just we couldn't, ALAN couldn't do what we do without the volunteer time that you put towards our organization. So we're super grateful for that. I love the partnership, and I'm just so thankful that we get to work with you.

- We are too. We really like working with you, Kathy.

- Yeah, I can't imagine doing the work without you guys.

- Thank you, Kathy. I know I've learned a lot about ALAN in this conversation, and I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today.

- Yeah, thanks, Lauren and Tim, it's been a real pleasure.

- Thanks, Kathy. Well, thanks for joining us on CTL's "Supply Chain Frontiers". I am Tim Russell, research engineer at the Center for Transportation and Logistics in the Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab.

- And I am Lauren Finegan, a research associate at the MIT Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab.

- Alright, everyone, thank you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this edition of "MIT Supply Chain Frontiers". My name is Arthur Grau, communications officer for the center, and I invite you to visit us anytime at ctl.mit.edu. Or search for "MIT Supply Chain Frontiers" on your favorite listening platform. Until next time.