Resource location for relief distribution and victim evacuation after a sudden-onset disaster

Abstract

Quick responses to sudden-onset disasters and the effective allocation of rescue and relief resources are vital for saving lives and reducing the suffering of the victims. This article deals with the problem of positioning medical and relief distribution facilities after a sudden-onset disaster event. The background of this study is the situation in Padang Pariaman District after the West Sumatra earthquake. Three models are built for the resource location and deployment decisions. The first model reflects current practice where relief distribution and victim evacuation are performed separately and relief is distributed by distribution centers within administrative boundaries. The second model allows relief to be distributed across boundaries by any distribution center. The third model further breaks down functional barriers to allow the evacuation and relief distribution operations share vehicles. These models are solved directly for small problems and by using a direct approach as well as heuristics for large problems. Test results on small problems show that resource sharing measures, both across boundaries and across different functions, improve on current practice. For large problems, the results give similar conclusions to those for small problems when each model is solved using its own best approach.

Keywords:

• Humanitarian logistics
• location-allocation
• cross functional coordination
• integer programming
• heuristics

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eko Setiawan

Eko Setiawan has been working in the Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta (UMS), Indonesia, since 2000 as an academic staff member. He teaches operations research and decision analysis at the department. He received a BSc in industrial engineering from Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS), Indonesia, in 2000, and earned an MSc in industrial engineering from the same institution in 2004. He undertook Ph.D. study in the School of Business and Economics at Loughborough University, United Kingdom, focusing on location-allocation models for relief distribution and victim evacuation following a disaster, and graduated in July 2015. Disaster management, location-related topics, routing problems and decision making are his current research areas of interest.

Jiyin Liu

Jiyin Liu is professor of operations management in the School of Business and Economics at Loughborough University, UK. He holds a BEng degree in Industrial Automation, a MEng degree in systems engineering from Northeastern University, P.R. China, and a Ph.D. degree in manufacturing engineering and operations management from the University of Nottingham, UK. His research interests are in operations planning and scheduling problems in logistics and production systems and in mathematical modeling, optimization, and heuristic methods. He has published papers in journals such as the European Journal of Operational Research, IEEE Transactions, IISE Transactions, International Journal of Production Research, Naval Research Logistics, Operations Research, and Transportation Research.

Alan French

Alan French is a senior lecturer in management science at Loughborough University, UK. He studied for his first degree and Ph.D. at the University of East Anglia. Between his degrees, he worked for the Central Electricity Generating Board in London. His research focuses on the application of management science techniques in business and he has published in the Journal of the Operational Research Society, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Heuristics and Computers and Operations Research.