Dra. María Teresa Ortuño Sánchez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid): "Operational research at the service of humanitarian action".

Date and place: Friday, February 13, 2026 · 11:00 h · Graduate room of the Facultat de Ciències Matemàtiques.

Abstract: Logistics is essential in humanitarian action, which aims to save lives and alleviate the suffering of vulnerable people. This action takes place in diverse contexts, one of the most common being disaster response, generally in situations of great uncertainty and with a very high time urgency. The scientific community, and in particular Operations Research, has accepted the challenge of supporting these activities by developing models, methods, and techniques that can aid in decision-making, and which, in general, cannot be directly extrapolated from models traditionally used in commercial logistics. We will review the main problems that have been addressed in recent decades, before focusing on two types: evacuation problems and humanitarian aid distribution problems.