Optimizing Vaccine Distribution in Developing Countries under Natural Disaster Risk

The John Gokongwei School of Management invites you to a Brown Bag Session on "Optimizing Vaccine Distribution in Developing Countries under Natural Disaster Risk". Our presenter is Dr Bonn Kleiford "Bikey" D. Seranilla, a Post-  Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Luxembourg.

This will be held on Wednesday, 7 August 2024 from 12:00 - 1:30PM at the Cabochan Room, SOM 307 and online via Zoom. Please register here: https://bit.ly/jgsombrownbag7aug2024

Brief Description of the Topic:
For many developing countries, COVID-19 vaccination roll-out programs are not only slow but vaccination centers are also exposed to the risk of natural disaster, like flooding, which may slow down vaccination progress even further. Policy-makers in developing countries therefore seek to implement strategies that hedge against distribution risk in order for vaccination campaigns to run smoothly and without delays. We propose a stochastic- dynamic facility location model that allows policy-makers to choose vaccination facilities while accounting for possible facility failure. The model is a multi-stage stochastic variant of the classic facility location problem where disruption risk is modelled as a binary multivariate random process–a problem class that has not yet been studied in the extant literature. To solve the problem, we propose a novel approximate dynamic programming algorithm which trains the shadow price of opening a flood-prone facility on historical data, thereby alleviating the need to fit a stochastic model. We trained the model using rainfall data provided by the local government of several major cities in the Philippines which are exposed to multiple flooding events per year. Numerical results demonstrate that the solution approach yields approximately 30%–40% lower cost than a baseline approach that does not consider the risk of flooding. Recommendations based on this model were implemented following a collaboration with two large cities in the Philippines which are exposed to multiple flooding events per year.

About the Speaker:
Bikey Seranilla is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Luxembourg Center for Logistics and Supply Chain Management (LCL) at the University of Luxembourg. He completed his Ph.D. at LCL in October 2023, with his dissertation titled "On the Applications of Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming." During his Ph.D., he was a visiting researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology under the supervision of the renowned Dr. Alexander Shapiro. Before joining LCL, Bikey earned his Master of Science in Management and Optimization of Supply Chains and Transport from IMT Atlantique (formerly Ecole des Mines de Nantes) in Nantes, France, and his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Xavier University – Ateneo de Cagayan. His research interests include applying [multistage] stochastic programming techniques to solve complex problems in supply chains and operations management. Bikey's work has been recognized with several awards. He received the 2022 Doing Good with Good O.R. First Place Award from the International Federation of Operational Research and Management Science Societies (INFORMS) in Indianapolis, USA. Additionally, he is the recipient of the 2024 Best Early Career Researcher Award from the Faculty of Law, Economics, and Finance at the University of Luxembourg. Bikey grew up in Cagayan de Oro, Philippines.