Supported Evacuation for Disaster Relief through Lexicographic Goal Programming

• Main Authors: Inmaculada Flores, M. Teresa Ortuño, Gregorio Tirado, Begoña Vitoriano
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-04-01
• Series: Mathematics
• Subjects: humanitarian logistics; evacuation; multi-criteria decision making; goal programming; disaster relief
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/8/4/648

Disasters have been striking human-beings from the beginning of history and their<br />management is a global concern of the international community. Minimizing the impact and<br />consequences of these disasters, both natural and human-made, involves many decision and logistic<br />processes that should be optimized. A crucial logistic problem is the evacuation of the affected<br />population, and the focus of this paper is the planning of supported evacuation of vulnerable people<br />to safe places when necessary. A lexicographic goal programming model for supported evacuation is<br />proposed, whose main novelties are the classification of potential evacuees according to their health<br />condition, so that they can be treated accordingly; the introduction of dynamism regarding the arrival<br />of potential evacuees to the pickup points, according to their own susceptibility about the disaster<br />and the joint consideration of objectives such us number of evacuated people, operation time and<br />cost, among which no trade-off is possible. The performance of the proposed model is evaluated<br />through a realistic case study regarding the earthquake and tsunami that hit Palu (Indonesia) in<br />September 2018.