You simply need to chose one of the options, A or B, laid out in the course Syllabus. You can work alone or with a team. Prepare as the Syllabus directs. For the Indian Hospitals option, you should try to prepare a cause-and-effect diagram of their operating model to learn what it is like to do this. You will find it a challenge.

For the Travel Innovated option, you should try to come up with a business model that could work in this evolving new space. This in contrast to the Indian Hospitals option, is for students who want to try to create something that works in the new world of travel management

Page 1 of 2 Planning and Executing an Earthquake Relief Effort An severe earthquake has hit a small island nation in the South Pacific Ocean off the Indonesian mainland. The local island government is overwhelmed and has ask the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination Relief Organization (UNDAC) agency for help. The UNDAC team in Indonesia sees its first tasks as: to assess the needs of the stricken island; to request NGO partners that it typically works with in that region for on-the-ground first responders; and, to produce a critical path schedule for the entire first phase operation, which is to get major supplies and equipment to the island and get them distributed to hard-hit areas. The agency has learned from experience how to compress the time from first notification of the disaster to delivery of needed relief people, materials, and equipment to the disaster site. These people typically include search and rescue teams, plus debris-clearing teams, emergency medical staff, and technicians who can help restore utility services, etc. These materials typically include water, food, medical supplies, blankets and tents, and building materials. This equipment typically includes construction equipment to clear debris and begin rebuilding structures and, if necessary trucks to deliver the materials and aid workers to where they are needed. To compress time, the UNDAC team does as much work in parallel rather than in series as possible, even though many activities cannot start until other, earlier actions have been completed. The island hit by the earthquake has only a short airstrip that can handle small airplanes carrying a small group of people and a limited number of boxes of first response supplies. The nearest major airport on the Indonesian mainland can fly to the island in just 3 hours. This airport will be used to fly small airplanes to supply the first responders and small amounts of relief materials to the island until a large ship can deliver much larger quantities of supplies and all the heavy equipment at later date from the nearest Indonesian seaport. Those ships take two days to reach the island. Prelimiary needs assessment by UNDAC begins on the day they learn of the earthquake (Day 1). On the same day, UNDAC contacts the island nation's government to establishing authorization to proceed with the effort. The island nation's government is both disrupted and bureaucratic so the authorization doesn't arrive until a day later (Day 2). And also on Day 1, UNDAC contacts NGO partners in Indonesia to see what key people they can contribute to the effort and when. NGOs get back to them within two hours. The first team of first responders can be at the airport in two days, ready to fly to the island. UNDAC and the NGO agree to that immediately. One day after UNDAC is notified, a preliminary needs assessment is completed, based on early reports from the front. This preliminary needs assessment is immediately translated into the types and amounts of materials, equipment, and people needed, and first urgent orders for water and medical materials are made to known Indonesian suppliers and relief warehouses are made the same day. The suppliers respond promptly and the materials are expected to arrive by truck at the airport two days later. They will be sent to the island by two small airplanes, along with the NGO's team of first responders on the same flight to save money. The flight will take only 3 hours, as noted earlier, and will depart for the island as soon as the suppliers' materials and the NGO's first responders are both at the airport. A day after UNDAC completes its preliminary needs assessment, it completes a more refined needs assessment, based on reports coming in from the field. This assessment allows them to pinpoint more accurately the particular needs for medical and building materials supplies as well as for specific construction equipment to clear debris and begin rebuilding. Based on this refined assessment, a second round of larger orders are sent to known suppliers. Suppliers of emergency materials include both public agencies and private industry. It's estimated to take two days for this round of supplies to get to the seaport. Similarly, a search is immediately launched for the right kinds of construction equipment, and fortunately dealers of second-hand construction equipment say they will get the needed equipment to the seaport in three days. Meanwhile, the same day UNDAC completes its refined needs assessment, it learns that most of the island's fleet of delivery trucks which would have delivered the supplies coming by ship were destroyed in the earthquake. So delivery trucks now must be located on the Indonesian mainland and placed on the same ship as the construction equipment going to the island. In an immediate frantic search for delivery trucks, UNDAC locates a supplier the same day, and the supplier says he can have six trucks at the seaport in three days. Also, on the same day UNDAC makes its refined needs assessment, UNDAC makes arrangements with a shipping broker for a ship to go to the island. It will take 4 days for the ship to be readied for sea, and the trip will take 2 additional days. The ship will carry all the supplies, construction equipment, and delivery trucks to the island.