Modeling and Simulation of Collaborative Dispatching of Disaster Relief Materials Based on Urgency

Gaofeng Guan,Zijun Lin,Zhijuan Jiang,Yu Gong

doi:10.1155/2020/4274106

Abstract

In order to address the lack of collaborative decision and failure to notice the emergency and fairness of relief after disasters have occurred, a collaborative decision-making system for emergency relief materials dispatching is established. According to the forecast of the demand for postdisaster relief materials, the entropy weight-TOPSIS method is applied to measure the urgency of the disaster area; then, a “Hub-and-Spoke” dispatching network is constructed. In this paper, a multiobjective collaborative relief material dispatching model is built, which has great performance in terms of minimal distribution cost and maximal fairness, and the objective of fairness requires minimizing the penalty cost caused by unsatisfied demands. Based on the urgency of demand points, the simulated annealing algorithm is designed to solve the Pareto disaggregation of multiobjective optimization model. The performance of the model is verified with the case of Wenchuan Earthquake. The results indicate that if the fair distribution of supplies is emphasized, it will increase the number of rescue vehicles and the number of distribution batches. On the other hand, a variety of relief material dispatching plans can be provided based on calculation of the Pareto front for policy-makers.

Highlights

Frequent large-scale natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, ice, and snow disasters, have caused serious damage to and far-reaching impact on modern society
According to the China National Ministry of Emergency Management and the National Disaster Reduction Commission, 130 million Chinese people were affected by natural disasters in 2018, 589 of whom died in these disasters [1]
During the dispatching of relief materials, both the maximal fair distribution for affected areas and the minimal cost of logistics service providers need to be considered. erefore, the decision makers should find a solution to address these problems, and collaborative distribution of relief materials is a possible solution because the complexity and multiple stages of relief activity determine the necessity of collaboration during relief process

Summary

Introduction

Frequent large-scale natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, ice, and snow disasters, have caused serious damage to and far-reaching impact on modern society. We aim to further investigate the following aspects: (1) the dispatching and transport of emergency relief materials are associated with each other, which requires collaboration between them, but these two issues are often studied as separate topics in most literatures, lacking systematic consideration of the synergism between these two aspects; (2) in view of the serious shortage of relief materials in the early stage after the earthquake, less attention is paid to the difference among the affected areas in terms of relief urgency; (3) a collaborative decision-making system among the relief subjects has not been established yet For this reason, with large-scale earthquake relief as a practical case, this work investigates the collaborative optimization of the dispatching of emergency relief materials under the emergency relief command system based on the actual situations of severe shortage of relief materials in the early stage after large-scale natural disasters. Table: Comparison of literature studies on relief materials distribution optimization model

Literature

Affected Areas Covered in Level-3 Hubs and Materials Dispatching

Demand Forecast of Relief Materials and Urgency Indicator

Conclusion and Future