Stochastic optimization for transportation planning in disaster relief under disruption and uncertainty Fatemeh Sabouhi School of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran Ali Bozorgi-Amiri School of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran, and Parinaz Vaez School of Industrial Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran Abstract Purpose – This study aims to minimize the expected arrival time of relief vehicles to the affected areas, considering the destruction of potential routes and disruptions due to disasters. In relief operations, required relief items in each affected area and disrupted routes are considered as uncertain parameters. Additionally, for a more realistic consideration of the situations, it is assumed that the demand of each affected area could be met by multiple vehicles and distribution centers (DCs) and vehicles have limited capacity. Design/methodology/approach – The current study developed a two-stage stochastic programming model for the distribution of relief items from DCs to the affected areas. Locating the DCs was the first-stage decisions in the introduced model. The second-stage decisions consisted of routing and scheduling of the vehicles to reach the affected areas. Findings – In this paper, 7th district of Tehran was selected as a case study to assess the applicability of the model, and related results and different sensitivity analyses were presented as well. By carrying out a simultaneous sensitivity analysis on the capacity of vehicles and the maximum number of DCs that can be opened, optimal values for these parameters were determined, that would help making optimal decisions upon the occurrence of a disaster to decrease total relief time and to maximize the exploitation of available facilities. Originality/value – The contributions of this paper are as below: presenting an integrated model for the distribution of relief items among affected areas in the response phase of a disaster, using a two-stage stochastic programming approach to cope with route disruptions and uncertain demands for relief items, determining location of the DCs and routing and scheduling of vehicles to relief operations and considering a heterogeneous fleet of capacitated relief vehicles and DCs with limited capacity and fulfilling the demand of each affected area by more than one vehicle to represent more realistic situations. Keywords Location, Stochastic programming, Relief item distribution, Route disruption, Routing and scheduling Paper type Research paper The author would like to thank the Editor and re-viewers for their valuable comments and suggestions which helped to improve the paper. This research was supported by the Iran NationalScience Foundation)INSF), project no. 96010485. Disaster relief under disruption and uncertainty Received 4 October 2020 Revised 17 October 2020 Accepted 17 October 2020 Kybernetes © Emerald Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/K-10-2020-0632 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/0368-492X.htm