The resilient blood supply chain system design for disaster relief

My co-researcher Prof. Xiao Liu (Shanghai Jiaotong University) and me developed a mathematical model which can be used to speed up the delivery of life-saving blood to victims of earthquakes and other disasters. We hope the work will reduce blood wastage and loss of life by increasing the chance of supplies reaching communities by the best routes with the most effective form of transportation in the quickest time possible. This work has been funded by a prestigious funding body - Royal Society International Exchanges Grant of £9600. The work is based on data collected from the Wenchuan earthquake of 2008 which affected the mountainous region of Sichuan province in Southwest China and resulted in the loss of more than 69,000 lives. We welcome the future collaborators to work on a decision support system, which can be used to manage massive disaster relief efforts. The system could allow rescuers to co-ordinate supplies by delivering from the most conveniently placed hospital, along the quickest routes to the areas most desperately in need. We welcome more people to join in our future research.

The funding enabled me to strengthen the collaboration with my Chinese collaborators. I gain the access to the new research area towards understanding the requirement of developing the resilient blood supply chain system during and after an earthquake in China. An excellent young Chinese PhD student visited me twice in the University of Portsmouth in UK to work on theoretical aspects of the research work. We have had multiple joint conference papers and are now working on one 3/4* paper that we aim to publish in an international journal.

I was thrilled by the fact that the above collaborative research outcomes brought me some impact internationally and a new collaborative research project that I never envisaged in my original proposal.

Since I presented our joint conference papers in the MIM 2019 conference, I have been invited to give a presentation as a "invited speaker" in the session on Donors and Donation in the 36th International Congress of the ISBT to be held in December 12-16, 2020. I was also invited to prepare a congress review article, a summary of the existing literature on the topic of the talk, which will be published in the ISBT Science Series, an e-journal associated with the congress.
I also attracted a self-funded PhD student, who will work on a blood platelets supply chain design for daily supply and demand with an emergency backup system. This research could open up a new potential avenue to cope with the blood platelet shortage during disasters. And this research could be co-supervised by the NHS Blood and Transport (NHSBT). I