Determination of An Airport As A Regional Distribution Centre Within The Scope Of Disaster Logistics

Abstract

Large-scale earthquakes, in particular, reveal critical vulnerabilities in transportation infrastructure and coordination mechanisms, significantly constraining the effectiveness of humanitarian response operations. When highways, railways, and airports are disrupted, disaster logistics becomes even more challenging. In such circumstances, airports play a strategic role as hubs for air based humanitarian aid distribution. However, the absence of a structured and criteria driven airport selection process may lead to inefficient resource utilization, operational bottlenecks, and diminished response performance due to infrastructural and environmental limitations. This study investigates the selection of an airport to function as distribution center for air-delivered humanitarian aid in a post-disaster context. Methodologically, the study applies an integrated PFAHP and PFTOPSIS to evaluate candidate airports under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity. The results indicate that the suggested fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making framework facilitates a more methodical, robust, and transparent assessment of different distribution centers. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to assess the stability and reliability of the results. This study enhances the disaster management literature by providing a structured technique for airport-based catastrophe logistics planning, thereby improving decision-making quality in high-uncertainty, high-impact disaster scenarios.