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Refugee camps are not easily welcomed by local communities. The purpose of this paper is to outline a structured approach to support the decision-making process for siting refugee camps in mainland Greece using multiple criteria, including local opposition. A suitability analysis generates a list of potential sites and a multiple criteria evaluation is applied. The motivation is the development of a methodology that can support choices and policies regarding the refugee camps siting problem, incorporating the need to address local opposition.

The proposed methodology combines geographic information systems (GIS) with multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques. These are used to develop a location classification and ranking model based on related criteria and subcriteria, attributes and weights. The region of Peloponnese in Greece is selected as a case study to validate the approach.

The lack of predefined candidate sites for refugee camps necessitates, initially, tackling a site search problem to generate a pool of potential sites through a suitability analysis. Subsequently, using the GIS the pool yields a subset of potential sites, satisfying all the criteria to setup a refugee camp. Through the current analysis the suitability of the single existing refugee camp site in Peloponnese can be evaluated. Finally, a “with and without” analysis, excluding the social criterion, depicts the changes in the candidate sites pool and their scores.

There is a lack of relevant literature taking into account the local opposition or sociopolitical implications as decision criteria. The selection of the appropriate criteria is a complex process that involves the cooperation of many experts. The main criteria, subcriteria and their attributes were determined according to existing literature and authors' informed judgment.

The proposed methodology can help decision-makers to setup a decision-making system and process for identifying refugee camps' sites using multiple criteria, including local opposition.

The Greek secondary education system lacks a formal crisis management system. The purpose of this paper is to address this problem as follows: elicit current crisis management practices, outline features for designing a formal crisis management system in Greece.

The research is based on a survey conducted with the directors of secondary education and the interpretation of the survey results. Due to the echelon structure of secondary education the directors are experienced educators with plenty of experience. They are in a unique setting to be able to combine the managerial perspective with field experience, both of which are important for managing crises.

First, events of sociopolitical nature are considered as important crisis triggers. Second, there is tendency to expect extended involvement of the state. Third despite the lack of a formal system, current practices are relevant and tend to mimic formal systems.

In practice the lack of a formal system does not impede crisis management to be applied in secondary education units.

There is no other survey on crisis management at the directors’ level that we are aware of. The findings outline existing practices from a tactical perspective, and can serve as a guide for designing a formal crisis management system that is suited for secondary education in Greece.

Strategic planning of the supply chain is an important decision problem determining the long‐term survival and prosperity of companies in the manufacturing, retail, and other industrial sectors. In general such companies rely on their information systems to acquire the essential data that are used in their planning models. The interaction of information systems and decision modelling, and the progressive transformation of data, into information, and knowledge is a key process underlying any decision support system (DSS) for strategic, tactical or operational planning. In this paper we consider a DSS for supply chain planning (SCP) decisions. The SCP system has an embedded decision engine that uses a two‐stage stochastic program as a paradigm for optimisation under uncertainty. The system has been used for decision making in diverse domains, including automotive manufacturing and consumer products.