1. Introduction
Every year from 2011–2020, natural disasters have occurred more than 560 times and were responsible for 25,000 deaths worldwide [
1]. Frequent and intense natural disasters pose a great threat to human survival and society, and pose challenges to government capabilities for emergency response and disaster rescue [
2]. In the face of disasters, safeguarding human life is the priority for emergency response. Emergency food supply is the dominant response mechanism, which can ensure human survival and basic needs of the affected populations in a disaster situation. In addition, the Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response clearly states that “Access to food and the maintenance of adequate nutritional status are critical determinants of people’s survival in a disaster” [
3]. There is a need to concentrate on the construction and development of the emergency food supply system, which can assure emergency food supplies continuity, improve rescue efficiency, and reduce disaster losses.
As a dominant manner for achieving the food supply, the food supply chain is a chain network structure composed of basic links such as material production, collection, reserves, and distribution [
4,
5,
6]. It has aroused growing concerns and research interests due to being highly flexible with the ability to adjust the composition of the supply chain to meet different supply demands as the application situation changes. Especially during disasters, constructing and developing the emergency food supply system from the perspective of the supply chain contributes to maintaining flexibility and resiliency of the emergency food supply system and improving the efficiency of the emergency food supply [
7,
8,
9,
10]. However, managing the food supply chain during disaster response is not that straightforward, and changes in disaster environment and society relationship over the last several years have raised the requirement for effective food supply chain management to a new level [
11,
12,
13,
14,
15]. During most disasters, lack of information, poor coordination, and confused process make it difficult to achieve an effective emergency food supply. Therefore, research on developing the emergency food supply system and improving post-disaster efficiency has become particularly important.
Constructing an emergency food supply system framework based on multidisciplinary might be a good choice, which can lay out the key domains and indicators, construction in a given situation, as well as the relationships between those involved domains and indicators. Furthermore, disaster is characterized by sudden-onset and uncertainty, and the emergency food demand of affected populations changes accordingly. Therefore, it is essential to divide the emergency food supply process into multiple periods (such as the initial period and the middle and late period) according to the emergency management perspective to comprehensively formulate, evaluate, and improve the emergency food supply plan [
16,
17].
This study proposed a multidisciplinary framework for the emergency food supply system from the perspective of the supply chain, which aimed to realize the coverage of the entire process of emergency food supply at the post-disaster macro level and to find an effective solution to provide emergency food to affected populations who are in need, assist decision-makers in emergency response, and improve the post-disaster emergency food supply efficiency.
4. Discussion
In this study, we designed a multidisciplinary framework for an emergency food supply system based on the supply chain and the emergency management perspective. The framework was divided into eight domains, namely emergency food demand, emergency food reserve, emergency food collection, emergency food supervision, emergency food transportation, emergency food distribution, an information system for emergency food supply, and policy responses to emergency food supply. Furthermore, all domains with almost equal weights indicated that they had similar significance for establishing the multidisciplinary framework. According to the Emergency Response Law of the People’s Republic of China, the State Council, and local people’s governments at or above the county level are the leading administrative organs for emergency response. Therefore, the framework proposed in this paper seeks to complete the emergency food supply in the order of demand prediction, using reserves or other means of collection, emergency supervision, emergency transportation, and emergency distribution on the premise that the emergency food supply is overseen by civil affairs departments at all levels [
24].
Emergency food demand is the first step during the emergency food supply. The main function of this domain is to conduct rapid demand forecasting to determine the required types and amount of emergency food needed by the affected populations. Previous studies have mostly emphasized the importance of predicting or evaluating the quantity of emergency food after a disaster, but few studies have focused on the influencing factors of the type of emergency food demanded [
2]. Therefore, this domain fully considered the influences of customs and religious beliefs (such as a halal diet, etc.), the season in which disasters occur (such as considering the supply of liquor in winter, etc.), geographical location (such as considering the high quantity of heat of emergency food in plateau-affected areas, etc.), and especially the rescue period on the types of emergency food demand. Influenced by the urgency of emergency food supply in the early period, the type of emergency food in this period was mainly universal food (such as bottled water, instant food, etc.). In the middle and later period, as the disaster situation was alleviated, selective food (such as functional drinks, catering, etc.) and general food (such as vegetables, flour, etc.) were added to the types of emergency food in this period on the basis of universal food. While meeting the basic physiological needs of the affected populations, emergency food supply also meets nutritional needs based on the principle of humanitarian relief [
17].
Emergency food reserves have been part of disaster preparedness narratives, and these are maintained to protect access to food for affected populations in the event of a food shortage during emergencies. During the emergency food supply, the geographical distribution and resource configuration of emergency reserves complement each other to ensure the optimal effect on the availability of emergency food [
34].
Emergency food collection is a basic domain for the emergency food supply post-disaster, which comprehensively considers the relevant contents of emergency food collection modes, responsible departments, and other factors such as personnel and funds affecting emergency food collection based on the principle of multichannel collection. Although previous studies have identified collection includes using reserves, urgent purchase, direct expropriation, social donations and emergency production, our group reached a consensus that this framework was designed for decision-makers; therefore, ultimately, we ultimately only considered the collection modes led by government (using reserves, urgent purchase, and direct expropriation) in the emergency food supply system. The same is true for the responsible departments and other factors.
Based on the existing literature, a variety of performance metrics have been proposed to build mathematical models for reducing the response time of post-disaster emergency transportation, such as risk, reliability, flexibility, economic loss, and other related measures [
35]. Accordingly, in this study, the domain of emergency food transportation focuses on the responsible departments, transportation modes, principles of selecting transportation plans, and other factors such as personnel and transportation tools affecting emergency food transportation based on the emergency responses and optimization principle, and aims to help decision-makers choose the best transportation scheme and shorten the transportation time.
Emergency food distribution is the last step during emergency food supply. Although few previous studies have addressed the distribution problems in the supply process, the participants of the focus group discussion reached a consensus on emergency food distribution for the affected populations. How to distribute emergency food in an orderly way has become a link that cannot be ignored [
4]. Therefore, this domain mainly includes the target groups, departments responsible for distribution, and distribution modes in the disaster relief scene.
Emergency food supervision ensures the safety and adequacy (the quality and quantity inspection) of emergency food throughout the entire emergency food supply. Moreover, our expert panel reached a consensus that emergency food should be inspected before transportation and distribution in order to ensure the safety of emergency food supply after a disaster.
In most disasters, information is scarce, which creates disruption in the flow of the food supply chain [
36]. Therefore, it is necessary to include an information system when designing an emergency food supply system. The information system can be applied during different periods. By collecting, processing, tracking, and visualizing relevant information during emergency food supply, the system contributes to accessing the current situation, coordinating emergency responses in a timely manner, and finding satisfactory plans for decision-makers.
Policy responses to emergency food supply are indispensable measures to address emergencies and are a particularly important component of national security. Policy responses provide a material basis and technical support for the effective and close implementation of emergency management and rescue work in the field [
37]. Therefore, this domain includes the emergency plan, emergency management system, emergency mechanism and emergency legal system of the emergency food supply according to China’s “one plan and three systems” emergency management system to ensure that the post-disaster emergency food supply has laws and evidence to follow.
To the best of our knowledge, the current work has systematically and comprehensively established and demonstrated the framework for the post-disaster emergency food supply system based on existing literature reports. Dividing the emergency food supply system into eight domains from a multidisciplinary perspective will not only clarify the responsibilities of the relevant departments but can also improve the efficiency by standardizing the entire emergency food supply (
Appendix A Table A2). In particular, considering that the type of emergency food demanded may vary with the rescue periods, we divided the emergency food supply into two periods, namely the initial period and the middle–late period, to meet the different needs of the affected populations. We believe that the proposed multidisciplinary framework in this paper has comprehensively covered the essential factors for the post-disaster emergency food supply system.
Although the present study design and execution were rigorous, certain limitations still exist. (1) Due to the limitations of the strict inclusion criteria for panelists, the low proportion of females on the expert panel may affect the final results. (2) Considering the generalizability of the results, the framework for the emergency food supply system should be further optimized in order to adapt to more countries and regions. (3) Although the M, Kj, and CV for the eight domains in the final framework all meet the inclusion criteria, however, the emergency food distribution (A5) and the emergency food supervision (A6) showed a weak coordination compared with other equivalent indicators. Therefore, a detailed framework of the emergency food supply system focused on a certain domain (for instance, A5 and A6) should be demonstrated in the future. (4) The study only focused on the construction of the framework based on the perspective of command decision-makers. It is regrettable that the study did not consider vulnerable populations or people who might need additional support during emergency responses. In future research, these deficiencies will be improved to make research more perfect. (5) According to the formula, Cronbach’s α value may higher than the true value when calculating a plenty of indicators.
5. Conclusions
In conclusion, this study proposed a multidisciplinary framework for a post-disaster emergency food supply system for emergency decision-makers. The proposal realized the full coverage of participating organizations during emergency food supply at a macro level and could be used as a cognitive tool for emergency workers to make corresponding commands and decisions. The research findings revealed that the framework of the emergency food supply system includes eight domains, which are emergency food demand, emergency food reserve, emergency food collection, emergency food transportation, emergency food distribution, emergency food supervision, an information system, and policy responses during post-disaster emergency responses. Based on a two-round modified Delphi study, a post-disaster emergency food supply system framework containing 25 first-grade indicators and 56 second-grade indicators was ultimately established and the reliability and validity of the framework was well proven using Kendall’s W and Cronbach’s α.
In this study, the proposed framework has extended the existing literature about the emergency food supply. In particular, the current study can help emergency decision-makers use the system framework to respond more scientifically and effectively to disasters such as strong earthquakes, avoid adverse phenomena such as overlapping responsibilities and redundant responses, and improve the emergency food supply efficiency.
Although the reliability and validity of this framework has been tested, future research is still needed to put the framework into practice to improve the post-disaster emergency food supply efficiency. Furthermore, this study mainly focused on the basic composition of the emergency food supply at the macro level; thus, it is suggested that a more detailed study of the above eight domains can be conducted on the basis of this paper in the future.