The decision-making models for relief asset management and interaction with disaster mitigation

Abstract

The World Health Organization defines a disaster as any occurrence that causes damage, destruction, ecological disruption, loss of human life, human suffering, deterioration of health and health services on a scale sufficient to warrant an extraordinary response from outside the affected community or area (Haghani and Oh, 1996 [1]). Natural disasters can be devastating in terms of human injuries and economic damages. For example, the two earthquakes that occurred in the Marmara region of Turkey in 1999 caused over 20,000 casualties and resulted in the collapse of more than 110,000 buildings (Karaman et al., 2008 [2]). The total cost of damage from these two earthquakes is estimated to range between 9 and 13 billion dollars (Bibbee et al., 2000 [3]). And in the recent Van, Erciş earthquakes, 644 people died and 35,000 houses collapsed (Van, Turkey Earthquake, 2011 [4]).It is obvious that earthquake disaster is a serious and intractable problem that threatens the ability of a nation to protect human lives and property losses. The extent of the casualties and economic damage calls for finding efficient solutions to important problems with the aim of enhancing the capability of reducing the impacts of such events and providing a quick and efficient response by rapidly supplying relief items such as emergency food, water, and medicine to those areas that are severely affected (Beamon and Balcik, 2008 [5]). The main motivation for this study is to reduce the number of casualties and to protect national properties (e.g. national infrastructure etc.) by showing disaster related problems' studies. Developing mathematical models for disaster-related problems and solving them by using operations research techniques have received increasing interest due to their efficiency in tackling these problems.