A Location-Allocation Model For Relief Distribution and Victim Evacuation

Abstract

One stage of disaster relief operations (DRO) is dealing with disaster response, an aspect of which is logistics. This paper firstly presents previous work on logistics in this area, particularly that which relates to natural disasters, into certain classifications. It is found that the distribution practice of disaster relief, the evacuation process of the injured victims, and the determination of temporary medical facilities after natural disaster occurrences can be treated in stages, in which stage I is on the location-allocation aspect whereas stage II is on the routing aspect. A location-allocation model which addresses the first stage of the aforesaid problem is subsequently proposed. The model is mainly characterized by the possibility to carry out both the distribution process of commodities and the evacuation process of victims between a disaster area and a temporary site. In cases where no existing medical facility is allocated to a disaster area, injured victims as well as injury-free sufferers in the area need to be transferred to the same temporary site.