A multi-objective model for resource allocation in disaster situations to enhance the organizational resilience and maximize the value of business continuity with considering events interactions

Abstract

Industry-related risks are increasing due to the growing expansion of industries. Each of these risks can have a natural origin (such as earthquakes, flood, and fire) or human origin (such as terrorist attacks, contagious diseases, and intentional or inadvertent mistakes of staff). In this regards, business Continuity Management (BCM) is a comprehensive method to identify risks and reduce the consequent impacts on the organizations’ activities. Essential aspects of BCM includes retrieval of products after disruptive events and resource allocation. Obviously, in each organization, the fundamental objective is to allocate the least amount of resources for retrieving operations and minimizing costs, as well as, restoring activities to the tolerance threshold, so that the disruptive events do not stop the critical activities. In this paper, a quantitative model is presented to allocate resources in the shortest possible time capable of minimizing the loss of organizations’ resilience and maximizing the Business Continuity Value (BCV), simultaneously. In case of facing disruption, the interaction of disruptive events and reactive actions is an underlying assumption which is also applied in the current proposed model. After solving the model with a numerical experiment, the results of the model were described, and it was found that disruptive events were recovered before the threshold of tolerance. Also, the results of the model were compared in the two following scenarios: (1) without considering the interaction of disruptive events and (2) with considering the interaction of disruptive events, respectively. In the second scenario, it was found that the activities were later retrieved and the possibility of stop activities was a higher amount.