Integrated Supply Chains of the Natural Disaster Relief Substances LIU Zhenling School of management Henan University of Technology Zhenzhou, China 450001 Email:Liuzhenling1858@126.com Abstract： As is well known that the natural disasters are usually uncertainty and unavoidable, the effective transportation and distribution of the material for disaster mitigation can relieve the disaster and reduce the influence on the peoples’ life. In this article, the author summaries the characters of natural disasters and the difficulties faced by disaster relief people in the supply chain of the disaster relief material, develops an integer programming model in which the materials are divided into two kinds, the common and the reusable, and gives the solution method. The research results indicate that the supply chain of disaster relief should be integrated both longitudinally and horizontally so as to realize the effective operation after the natural disaster coming into truth. Keywords: Disaster relief, emergency logistics, information system, integer programming model, supply chain I. INTRODUCTION The disasters mitigation is a hot topic in the supply chains management in recent years. As is well known that many natural disasters, such as tsunami, typhoon, volcanic eruption, floods and so on, are unpreventable, their impacts on human well-being certainly can be mitigated through the effective transportation and distribution of the disaster relief material. It is no denying that the rescue and salvation in the earthquake area is very important in order to secure lives and reduce the loss in property. In recent years, with the deepening researches in logistics, emergency logistic has become a branch, which deals with the transportation and distribution of material and substances for disasters relief. When a high magnitude of earthquake occurs, such as Wenchuan earthquakes-a catastrophe in China’s history, the efficient emergency logistics and aid distribution become very vital to the nation. While the logistics derived from the study of the commodity transportation and distribution in commercial environment, emergency logistics mainly study dispatching materials from distribution centre to the earthquake area with minimizing time periods. However, both the earthquake and the secondary disasters are uncertainty, abrupt and dynamic, so that it makes the emergency logistics more complicated. Generally, the earlier the aid reaches, the more effectiveness the disaster mitigates. In view of prompt transportation, base on the conventional delivery of supply chain, this paper regards the aid transfers between earthquakes areas as a practical and effective way to solve the problem of commodities unavailability and satisfy urgent needs of trapped people. Therefore, if the vertical integration in supply chain and horizontal integration in affected areas are all included into the model, the emergency logistics system can meet the urgent materials demanding to the greatest extent and have strong adaptability to the dynamic environment. This is the principle to be considered in this paper. II. ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM A. Literature Review Emergency logistics has emerged as a noticeable theme in supply chain management study as various disasters, either artificial or natural, may occur anytime with enormous consequences. Emergency logistics is quite different from business logistics in many facets: the corresponding operational resources (containers, modes, and servers), the nature of problem, operational purposes, and demand features (the people served) and so on [1] . Researchers have 978-1-4244-4639-1/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE