Highlights to design a framework to carry out an immediate response in real time to an earthquake disaster in urban areas

After an earthquake strikes, the survival and the suffering reduction of the victims largely depends on the aid provided within the first hours of the emergency by the local government, as the first responder, supported by local relief agencies. At the beginning, the response can represent a coordination problem because each agency carries out their own logistics practices and the lack of information. In this paper, some highlights to design a framework to carry out an early response, in charge of local government, to an earthquake disaster in urban areas are presented. The paper presents six main elements of a management procedure for delivering relief goods from local warehouses to aid-giving facilities (with the aim of meet, as possible, the relief demand in real time): damage assessment, operative coordination, information management coordination, facilities management, vehicle paths management, and inventory management. The management in the first hours of a hypothetical earthquake emergency is exemplified, by considering a short-distance distribution network and these six elements for an area of Mexico City, selecting the scenario to begin the relief efforts and assessing the subsequent reports of damaged buildings and roads.