Multi-Objective Emergency Material Vehicle Dispatching and Routing under Dynamic Constraints in an Earthquake Disaster Environment

Jincheng Jiang,Wei Tu,Qingquan Li,Lixin Wu

doi:10.3390/ijgi6050142

Abstract

Emergency material vehicle dispatching and routing (EMVDR) is an important task in emergency relief after large-scale earthquake disasters. However, EMVDR is subject to dynamic disaster environment, with uncertainty surrounding elements such as the transportation network and relief materials. Accurate and dynamic emergency material dispatching and routing is difficult. This paper proposes an effective and efficient multi-objective multi-dynamic-constraint emergency material vehicle dispatching and routing model. Considering travel time, road capacity, and material supply and demand, the proposed EMVDR model is to deliver emergency materials from multiple emergency material depositories to multiple disaster points while satisfying the objectives of maximizing transport efficiency and minimizing the difference of material urgency degrees among multiple disaster points at any one time. Furthermore, a continuous-time dynamic network flow method is developed to solve this complicated model. The collected data from Ludian earthquake were used to conduct our experiments in the post-quake and the results demonstrate that: (1) the EMVDR model adapts to the dynamic disaster environment very well; (2) considering the difference of material urgency degree, the material loss ratio is −10.7%, but the variance of urgency degree decreases from 2.39 to 0.37; (3) the EMVDR model shows good performance in time and space, which allows for decisions to be made nearly in real time. This paper can provide spatial decision-making support for emergency material relief in large-scale earthquake disasters.

Highlights

In recent years, large-scale earthquakes have caused great damages to people’s lives and property, such as the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 [1], the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009 [2], the Lushan earthquake in 2013 [3], the Ludian earthquake in 2014 [4], a Nepalese earthquake in 2015 [5], and so on
The flow supplies, flow demands, road travel times, and road capacities in a dynamic network flow model can represent the material supplies of emergency material depositories, the material demands of disaster points, the travel time passing through road, and the maximum entering rate of road in the real-world emergency material relief system, respectively
As the dynamic network flow model is matched well with an emergency material relief system, the material dispatching and routing are modeled as the dynamic network flow model in this paper

Summary

Introduction

Large-scale earthquakes have caused great damages to people’s lives and property, such as the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 [1], the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009 [2], the Lushan earthquake in 2013 [3], the Ludian earthquake in 2014 [4], a Nepalese earthquake in 2015 [5], and so on. The primary task in the wake of disaster is to meet fundamental human material needs, especially in the first 72 h [6]. This requires that emergency materials be delivered to disaster points as fast as possible. Much effort has gone into disaster management [7,8], disaster assessment [9], and decision-making on rescue plans [10,11,12] with the support of geographic information science [13,14,15]. To provide effective spatial decision-making support from a macro perspective, the features of emergency material relief in a large-scale earthquake disaster should be comprehensively considered as follows:

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion