War-torn Syria: Humanitarian aid organizations are sharing resources
11 June 2020
2020 marks a sad anniversary for Syria, as it enters its ninth year of conflict. The war has fuelled a mass exodus, with over half of the Syrian population now living in exile. The humanitarian aid agencies supporting these displaced men, women and children are having more than ever before to show ingenuity and innovation in tackling the unprecedented crisis and, above all, to optimize every resource and expenditure as they seek ways to be more efficient.
CLS is assisting these organizations in their daily operations and strategic decisions. With its HumaNav geolocation and connected fleet management solution, CLS is reinventing logistic dispatching to enable the humanitarian sector to share resources. Vehicles, drivers, passengers, needs and resources are pooled together on a single platform and all transport requests are automatically digitized, traced and fulfilled to reduce and rationalize trips in order to get maximize their value.
War-torn Syria is the focus of the world’s worst refugee crisis. The figures make grim reading: some 385,000 people have lost their lives there and five million refugees have fled to neighbouring countries or further.
When there is nowhere left to shelter, houses and buildings are reduced to ruins and all the camps are full, many people seek refuge in Lebanon. Humanitarian agencies there are under extreme pressure as they try to cope with the flow of refugees from across the border.
CLS is working with these agencies to offer solutions that help them to pool vehicles and drivers.
Here’s how it works. The idea is to allow field teams to reserve transport and soon to share it between agencies in the same country. Like a car-sharing service for the humanitarian sector, the solution is yielding its first performance indicators in Lebanon, where it has been operating for several months now. More than 400 NGO users are already connecting to the platform via the application to book trips. Until now, many vehicles were ferrying only one person at a time and not optimizing return trips. Steadily, trips are now being planned and shared, which is having a real impact on mileage.
The first results are already there in Lebanon and HumaNav’s fleet sharing feature is meeting the precise needs of organizations combating the aftermath of the conflict.
The vehicle and driver fleet sharing feature developed by CLS offers several advantages for agencies. First of all, it helps them reduce mission logistic costs. The cost of purchasing, operating and servicing fleets accounts for a large slice of organizations’ budgets. By spending less on vehicle logistics, they can therefore devote more resources to humanitarian programmes—a key objective, especially in nations perpetually in crisis.
Vehicles are strategic assets to accomplish missions and get field teams and supplies to where they are needed. Sometimes, there are just not enough of them. The availability, security and longevity of fleets are also key objectives for humanitarian agencies’ operations.
Organizations on the ground therefore turned to CLS to craft a long-term solution together. After many months working in close collaboration with teams in the field, it found a way to meet their needs through hybrid solutions and global network coverage.
Fleet performance is also optimized by the fleet sharing feature. Key indicators throughout the logistics chain—mileage, number of vehicles operated, maximum vehicle use, etc.—enable organizations to gauge fleet efficiency, with the same goal always in mind: saving costs and focusing on actual missions.
The project marks a new step along the path to digitizing operations and assigning resources to achieve efficiency gains in drivers’ hours and mileage, as well as cost savings and a reduced carbon footprint. It thus promises to deliver big benefits for organizations. Many organizations are set to use the new solution around the globe in the coming months.
In the future, communal management of logistics fleets will help them to aid people in need more effectively.