Iris Hausladen, Alexander Haas

• The need for well-executed humanitarian operations and logistics is bigger thanever for facing manifold catastrophes and their resulting long-term activities indifferent areas, different eironments, and different political and ecological contexts. For instance, war and rebellion in Central Africa forced more than 200 000 inhabitants to leave the country (Euronews 2013). This leads to an increase in the need for humanitarian logistics such as the provision of fresh water for refugees inhospitals and refugee camps (ICRC 2013). It has been reported by the Norwegian Refugee Council that the number of people, to be exact 32.4 million worldwide,who were forced to leave their homes by disasters is nearly twice as high as theyear before (NRC 2013); so there is still a strong demand for effective humanitarian logistics to react to catastrophes and to improve the subsequent humanitarian situation. _x000D_ Nevertheless, sustainability is perceived as an emerging trend including all branches and functions, both in the private sector and in the field of business. Therefore,deliberations to unite the objectives of humanitarian logistics and considerationsregarding sustainability are obvious. These considerations, especially within thetriad of ecology, economy and society, reveal gaps in the research as well as inthe practice (Kovács and Spens 2011b). Moreover, a potential area for researchis seen in the area of slow-onset disasters, a field which has been neglected by academia so far, to enhance sustainability by focusing on long-term developmentsof humanitarian logistics (Kovács and Spens 2011a).