Rapid and efficient wide-scale distribution of medical supplies plays a critical role in assuring the effectiveness in managing the risks of large-scale emergencies such as a bio-terrorism attack. Important issues in the design of such an efficient distribution network involve deciding how to route distribution vehicles and how to manage these inventories. The high uncertainty, limited supply and overwhelming demand associated with a large-scale emergency may result in significant unmet demand, which is a direct representation of the most undesirable consequence – loss of life. Solving appropriate vehicle routing and inventory management problems in a coordinated manner can ensure the design of a logistic network capable of efficiently distributing medical supplies to decrease the potential fatalities in responding to a large-scale emergency. In this work, we develop models and solution approaches to solve a perishable inventory management problem and a vehicle routing problem in the context of emergency response to minimize unmet demand.

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