19S Earthquake in Puebla, Mexico: Intervention of the Different Actors in Humanitarian Aid

Abstract

Nowadays, humanitarian logistics (HL) has caught the attention of researchers and practitioners, given its role in natural disasters, which differentiates it from commercial logistics. However, research conducted in this field is not well-documented in different parts of the world. So, the objective of this chapter is to document how HL was applied in Mexico. Mainly, it is explained how the process was carried out from the occurrence of the 19S earthquake until one year later. This analysis summarizes the behavior of all involved agents in such catastrophe (victims, volunteers, government, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)), who also integrate the humanitarian supply chain (HSC). For example, the emergence of a civic organization whose objective was to provide support to those affected by the earthquake was documented. Among the findings, it was observed that the allocation of human and material resources for reconstruction is one of the central problems that face such organizations. Besides, it was found that that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) played a predominant role in the coordination of logistics activities between volunteers and victims. Aside from the documentation of HL activities during the September 19th, it is also provided a comparison between the literature existing in the HSC management, and a theoretical framework as well to apply HL in a real context.

Appendix:

The survey¹ seeks to assess the impact of the effects on the population that belongs to some of the localities near the epicenter of the earthquake, within the stages of the disaster. This survey was conducted based on the Population Survey on flood risk due to heavy rains (Godefoy et al., 2017), which also seeks to measure the impact of the disaster, including the government, infrastructure and society dimension.

For the measurement of responses, the Likert Scale was used, which is intended to measure attitudes; Individual predispositions to act in a certain way in specific social contexts (García et al., 2011).

In this case, the questions used were of open modality. The application of the Likert Scale is applied in the repetition of the sentences used by the respondents, having as a scale of 1 the negative answers, 3 for the answers in which the knowledge was not known, 5 for positive answers.

The blocks of questions and their scores are listed in Appendix 7.A of the spreadsheet.

Reliability refers to the consistency or stability of a measure (Quero, 2010). To measure the reliability of the instrument in this case, Cronbach’s Alpha was used. The formula is the following:

$$\propto = \frac{\text{K}}{{{\text{K}} - 1}} \left[ {1 - \frac{\sum Vi}{Vt}} \right]$$

(7.8)

where:

K:

Ítems

$\sum Vi$:

Sum of individual variances

Vt:

Total variance

The variances of each item are obtained within the table, resulting in:

Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Q5	Q6
1.442356392	2.79288285	2.46941224	1.38198054	1.94842063	3.8118086

Q7	Q8	Q9	Q10	Q11	Q12
1.64787418	2.43196055	2.54631481	4.01119552	4.01119552	2.270825

The sum of the individual variances is equal to 30.7662268

The total variance is obtained from the sum of the scores of each survey. Subsequently, the variance is calculated in the sum of all the scores.

Total variance: 102.77609

Value assigned:

K :

12

$\sum Vi$ :

30.7662268

Vt :

102.77609

$$\propto = \frac{12}{12 - 1} \left[ {1 - \frac{30.7662268}{102.77609}} \right]$$

$$\propto = \varvec{ }0.76434328$$

The reliability is 0.76434328, in a margin between 0 and 1. Taking one as the total confidence.