Oscar Rodriguez

• PhD
• Reader at Aston University

The logistical deployment of resources to provide relief to disaster victims and the appropriate planning of these activities are critical to reduce the suffering caused. Disaster management attracts many organisations working alongside each other and sharing resources to cope with an emergency. Consequently, successful operations rely heavily on t...

Relief activities are complicated when multiple disasters take place simultaneously at different locations. Designing effective relief networks for these instances involves managing the priorities among regions and products, developing the capacity to share limited resources and facilities, and engaging with multiple suppliers over several periods....

The increasing damage caused by disasters is a major challenge for disaster management authorities, especially in instances where simultaneous disasters affect different geographical areas. The uncertainty and chaotic conditions caused by these situations combined with the inherent complexity of collaboration between multiple stakeholders complicat...

When managing crises and disasters, decision-makers face high uncertainty levels, disrupted supply chains, and damaged infrastructure. This complicates delivering resources that are essential for the survival of the victims. Flexible and adaptable supply networks are needed to ensure a consistent flow of relief to the areas affected by disasters. I...

Internal organisational factors have been identified as barriers to adopt circular economy (CE) practices in prior research. However, empirical evidence is limited to support this claim. Additionally, their impact on sustainable business performance, especially for the emerging economies and within the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have...

The UN's sustainable development goals underscore engaging supply-chain stakeholders with environmentally friendly practices. Small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) are key participants in several supply chains, but their operations often produce a significant environmental impact. Their transition to sustainable practices is challenging because...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly adopted within Human Resource management (HRM) due to its potential to create value for consumers, employees, and organisations. However, recent studies have found that organisations are yet to experience the anticipated benefits from AI adoption, despite investing time, effort, and resources. The existi...

The Industry 4.0 (I4.0) revolution has led to rapid digital transformation, automation of manufacturing processes and efficient decision-making in business operations. Despite the potential benefits of I4.0 technologies in operations management reported in the extant literature, there has been a paucity of empirical research examining the intention...

The impact of blockchain technology (BCT) implementation on the accuracy, reliability, visibility, incorruptibility, and timeliness of supply-chain processes and transactions, makes it attractive to improve the robustness, transparency, accountability and decision-making in risk management. Therefore, the emerging BCT can present an invaluable oppo...

We introduce the BDA dynamics and explore the associated applications in renewable energy sector with a focus on data-driven innovation. Our study draws on the exponential growth of renewable energy initiatives over the last decades and on the paucity of literature to illustrate the use of BDA in the energy industry. We conduct a qualitative field...

This chapter presents an overview of the key aspects and key conclusions from all the topics discussed in this book. It concludes with future research avenues.

This chapter discusses the data sharing issues in ASCs and how the agriculture 4.0 applications have transformed the operations of the ASC entities. The latter are discussed in relation to all the different ASC entities which are farmers, processors, distributors, retailers, and consumers.

This chapter starts with the definition of circular economy then it discusses the need for circular economy in ASCs. Then the relationship between corporate social responsibility, circular economy, agriculture 4.0 and sustainability are discussed. In relation to that the principles of circular economy are explained. The chapter concludes with a dis...

This chapter discusses the different technological applications of Agricultural Supply Chains 4.0. By doing so a wide range to technological applications are explained which are: smart farming applications, smart devices and platforms, IoT, temperature control applications, blockchain applications, tracking and tracing technologies, autonomous land...

This chapters starts through the explanation of the industry 4.0 concepts, its evolution, and its different technological applications. As part of Industry 4.0 a wide range of technological applications are discussed which are: big data analytics, autonomous robots, simulation, horizontal and vertical system integration, IoT, the cloud, additive ma...

This chapter starts with an introduction of the agricultural supply chains and then the need for value addition is explained. The chapter aims to introduce the reader to the key issues that ASCs are facing in relation to food loss, food safety, food insecurity and accessibility, increased demand for food, decreasing natural resources, raw materials...

In this chapter the opportunities of agricultural 4.0 supply chains are presented. These include real-time data analysis and decrease of operational costs, increase in revenue and production flexibility, improvement in sustainabilitysustainability and enables circular economy, enhanced reliability and uptime, self-optimisation and quality of servic...

This chapter discusses the sustainabilitysustainability aspect of agricultural 4.0 supply chains. It starts with the definitions of sustainability, triple bottom linetriple bottom line, and ASC sustainability. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the concept of sustainability performance and an explanation of its importance in relation to agr...

The introduction chapter presents the aim of this book and provides summaries of the chapters’ contents.

This chapter presents the challenges of agricultural 4.0 supply chains which are identified as being sector heterogeneity, farm size, validation and collaborationcollaboration, safety and security, investment costs, and design and compatibility.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether agricultural supply chains (ASC) can be simultaneously sustainable and resilient to ecological disruptions, using the Planetary Boundaries theory. The nine different Planetary Boundaries i.e. climatic change, biodiversity loss, biogeochemical, ocean acidification, land use, freshwater availability, st...

There is an agreement among European countries about the need to achieve efficient, effective and responsive evacuations as part of disaster management. Evacuations face uncertain and dynamic conditions, which often challenge the expectations at the planning stage. This research looks at the adoption of agility in evacuation operations. Managers in...

This book explores the impact of industry 4.0 on agricultural supply chains, exploring how changes such as increased digitisation, automation, and the digital value chain, will impact food production globally. At a time when increasing population and environmental degradation puts stress on food supply chains, traditional farming operation models s...

We introduce a two-stage stochastic program to handle typical disaster preparedness activities under uncertainty from a multi-agency perspective. The model explicitly takes into account the number of people without healthcare attention, relief aid, and shelter support. We build a function that represents the total number of people at risk of not re...

The growing importance of humanitarian operations has created an imperative to overcome the complications currently recorded in the field. Challenges such as delays, congestion, poor communication and lack of accountability may represent opportunities to test the reported advantages of emergent disruptive technologies. Meanwhile, the literature on...

The purpose of the paper is to extend the social media analytics frameworks reported in the existing literature to create value from the data captured from heterogenous social media and IoT sources in a global supply-chain. The paper will aid the practitioners to understand the importance of focused analysis and the key requirements for this analys...

Disasters represent a significant challenge for countries globally. Balancing human and material resources during these situations is not a trivial issue, and that is further complicated by the participation of several actors at multiple periods. However, there is an absence of articles considering the importance of deploying only the required orga...

Disaster management entails activities for responding to and recovering from disruption to normal conditions. Disasters restrict the ability of operations managers, but technologies such as 3D printing have been proposed as a means of overcoming some of the restrictions. This research uses a state-of-the-art review of 3D printing technologies to de...

Purpose Decision-making structures are commonly associated with the logistics challenges experienced during disaster operations. However, the alignment between the operational level and the decision-making structure is commonly overlooked. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the fit of both levels and its impact on performance....

Different governments are recurring to stock prepositioning to improve immediate disaster response because it can reduce procurement delays and distribution lead-time. However, it can be an expensive policy. Mexico has used this policy for several years with poor results. The purpose of this research is to integrate GIS and optimisation for the ana...

Emergency logistics is acquiring a crucial role aiming to provide adequate care and support for people affected by catastrophic situations; dealing with a large number of stakeholders, scarcity of resources and high stakes. Considering the importance of balancing resources from different participants to improve operations, this research introduces...

Despite considerable investment and advances focused in disaster prevention, catastrophes continue to affect several communities globally as evidenced by the 6,698 events occurred between 2000 and 2015 (CRED, 2016). Analysis of that number, however, should consider the differences between developed countries and developing countries. For instance,...

. Emergency logistics is acquiring a crucial role aiming to provide adequate care and support for people affected by catastrophic situations; dealing with a large number of stakeholders, scarcity of resources and high stakes. Considering the importance of balancing resources from different participants to improve operations, this research introduce...

Floods are one of the most dangerous and common disasters worldwide, and these disasters are closely linked to the geography of the affected area. As a result, several papers in the academic field of humanitarian logistics have incorporated the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for disaster management. However, most of the contributions...

The increasing trend of disaster victims globally is posing a complex challenge for disaster management authorities. Moreover, to accomplish successful transition between preparedness and response, it is important to consider the different features inherent to each type of disaster. Floods are portrayed as one of the most frequent and harmful disas...