We have reviewed disaster management research papers published in major operations management, management science, operations research, supply chain management and transportation/logistics journals. In reviewing these studies, our objective is to assess and present the macro level “architectural blue print” of disaster management research with the hope that it will attract new researchers and motivate established researchers to contribute to this important field. The secondary objective is to bring this disaster research to the attention of disaster administrators so that disasters are managed more efficiently and more effectively. We have mapped the disaster management research on the following five attributes of a disaster: (1) Disaster Management Function (decision‐making process, prevention and mitigation, evacuation, humanitarian logistics, casualty management, and recovery and restoration), (2) Time of Disaster (before, during and after), (3) Type of Disaster (accidents, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, landslides, terrorism and wildfires etc.), (4) Data Type (Field and Archival data, Real data and Hypothetical data), and (5) Data Analysis Technique (bidding models, decision analysis, expert systems, fuzzy system analysis, game theory, heuristics, mathematical programming, network flow models, queueing theory, simulation and statistical analysis). We have done cross tabulations of data among these five parameters to gain greater insights into disaster research. Recommendations for future research are provided.

We reviewed research papers related to pandemics/epidemics (disease outbreaks of a global/regional scope) published in major operations management, operations research, and management science journals through the end of 2019. We evaluate and categorize these papers. We study research trends, explore research gaps, and provide directions for more efficient and effective research in the future. In addition, our recommendations include the lessons learned from the ongoing pandemic, COVID-19. We discuss papers in the following categories: (a) warning signals/surveillance, (b) disease propagation leading to pandemic conditions, (c) mitigation, (d) vaccines and therapeutics development, (e) resource management, (f) supply chain configuration, (g) decision support systems for managing pandemics/epidemics, and (h) risk assessment.