Prioritizing Resilient Vaccine Distribution Strategies: A BWM-TOPSIS Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Framework

Abstract

Vaccine distribution is a logistics-intensive public-health function in which product quality, coverage, timeliness, and equity depend on the interaction between cold-chain capacity, transportation reliability, data visibility, institutional coordination, and last-mile service delivery. In countries where infrastructure and governance arrangements are uneven across regions, vaccine logistics cannot be improved through a single technical intervention. It requires a structured decision process capable of prioritizing the criteria that matter most and identifying improvement strategies that offer the highest overall contribution to system resilience. This paper develops a multi-criteria decision-making framework for prioritizing resilient vaccine distribution strategies in Libya. The framework combines the Best Worst Method (BWM), used to derive criteria weights from expert judgments, with the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), used to rank five improvement strategies. Eight logistical criteria are considered: cold-chain equipment and storage capacity, temperature monitoring and data visibility, transportation accessibility and fleet reliability, power reliability and backup energy, inventory management and wastage control, human resources and SOP compliance, institutional coordination and emergency preparedness, and equity of last-mile coverage. The BWM results assign the highest weights to cold-chain equipment and storage capacity, power reliability and backup energy, transportation accessibility, and temperature monitoring. TOPSIS ranks upgrading cold-chain equipment and backup power as the most preferred strategy, followed by developing regional hubs with route optimization. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the leading strategy remains stable under alternative weighting scenarios. The proposed framework offers a transparent decision-support tool for health authorities and development partners seeking to strengthen vaccine supply-chain resilience in Libya and similar fragile or infrastructure-constrained settings.