A Multi-objective Location Decision Making Model for Emergency Shelters Giving Priority to Subjective Evaluation of Residents

Abstract

Earthquake is regarded as the most destructive and terrible disaster among all-natural disasters [1]. Experts agree that immediate emergency evacuation is the safest and most effective response to the earthquake disaster [2]. In the research of emergency evacuation planning, the influence of human subjectivity has gradually attracted researchers’ attention. In this paper, we take the human subjectivity as one of the most important factors for emergency evacuation planning. Based on the preferences of the residents at each demand point for the attributes of every candidate emergency shelter, the subjective score of each candidate emergency shelter is obtained. The preferences of residents will change with the refuge time, so do the weights of residents’ subjective scores of all attributes of candidate emergency shelters. Therefore, we use the subjective score function to describe the change of residents’ evaluations for the emergency shelter over time, and take the average value of subjective scores at all refuge times as the primary basis for location decision making. On these bases, we build a multi-objective location decision making model for emergency shelters giving priority to subjective evaluation of residents. In the model, we consider transfer distance, the efficiency of construction funds and the distribution of people among emergency shelters. Considering fairness, we minimize the standard deviation of the scores and the standard deviation of the transfer distances in the model. This model is applied to a case, which verifies its feasibility and shows that human subjectivity plays an important role in emergency evacuation planning.