The Fritz Institute is a non-profit organization providing logistical support and software to humanitarian efforts worldwide; I spoke with its managing director, Dr. Anisya Thomas, last November. Its primary goal is to build up an "institutional memory" of best practices for relief and humanitarian logistics. To that end, the Institute has now published Logistics and the Effective Delivery of Humanitarian Relief, based on its experiences assisting with post-tsunami operations in Southeast Asia.

The key finding: there aren't nearly enough people who understand logistics working in humanitarian fields.

Logistics and the Effective Delivery of Humanitarian Relief can be downloaded from the Fritz Institute website (PDF).