Abstract
The reasonable utilization of limited resources is critical to realize the sustainable developments. In the initial 72-h crucial rescue period after the disaster, emergency supplies have always been insufficient and the demands in the affected area have always been uncertain. In order to improve timeliness, utilization and sustainability of emergency service, the allocation of the emergency supplies and the emergency vehicle routes should be determined simultaneously. Assuming the uncertain demands follow normal distribution, an optimization model for the emergency vehicle routing, by considering the insufficient supplies and the uncertain demands, is developed. The objective function is applied to minimize the total costs, including the penalty costs induced by more or less supplies than the actual demands at all demand points, as well as the constraints of the time windows and vehicle load capacity taken into account. In more details, a solution method for the model, based on the genetic algorithm, is proposed, which solves the problem in two stages. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the efficiency and validity of the proposed model and algorithm.
Highlights
In recent years, around the world, natural disasters, such as earthquake, hurricane, volcanic eruption and flood, are occurring increasingly frequently
We could determine the served demand point set of each supply center on the basis of time constraint of the problem, and multi-depot vehicle routing problem of emergency resources can be transformed into single depot vehicle routing problem of emergency resources
According to the particularity and practicality of emergency rescue after disaster, the problem can be divided into two stages, in which the first stage is to determine the served demand point set of each center, and the second stage is to optimize the used vehicle number and vehicle routes at each center
Summary
Around the world, natural disasters, such as earthquake, hurricane, volcanic eruption and flood, are occurring increasingly frequently. More than 500 disasters are estimated to strike our planet every year, killing around 75,000 people and impacting more than 200 million others [1]. The enormous scale of these disasters has called attention to the need for effective and sustainable management of the relief activities after disasters. For relief activities in post-disaster, to transport sufficient emergency supplies to affected areas in order to support basic needs for those trapped in disaster-affected areas is a critical challenge [2]. It is necessary to enhance the sustainability of the emergency service to make full use of the resources. The effectiveness and timeliness of the delivery are significant to the humanitarian response and the sustainability of the rescue operation, which provide the motivation for this work
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