Stochastic facility location model for drones considering uncertain flight distance

Abstract

This paper developed a stochastic modelling framework to determine the locations and transport capacities of drone facilities for effectively coping with a disaster. The developed model is applicable to emergency planning that incorporates drones into humanitarian logistics while taking into account the uncertain characteristics of drone operating conditions. Because of the importance of speedy decision making in disaster management, a heuristic algorithm was developed using Benders decomposition, which generates time-efficient high-quality solutions. The linear programming rounding method was used to make the algorithm efficient. Computational experiments demonstrated the superiority of the developed algorithm, and a sensitivity analysis was carried out to gain additional insights.