Title: A new approach for evacuation process in disaster relief with uncertainties

Authors: Minoo Kazeminia; Hossein Naderi; Alimohamad Ahmadvand

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, Eyvanekey Institute of Higher Education, Tehran, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, South-Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Imam Hosein University (IHU), Tehran, Iran

Abstract: In this paper, a new mathematical model is presented for evacuation and relief management in case of disasters. Since these kinds of phenomena contain remarkable uncertainties, fuzzy theory is used to deal with it. When a disaster happens, travelling times between each two nodes are not certain. To this aim, a fuzzy inference system is employed to predict travelling times. And, different scenarios are designed to cover various conditions and to reach the optimum decision. Size of scenario tree exponentially increases by increasing number of nodes and arcs. Consequently, in large-sized problems a huge scenario tree is resulted and the problem becomes too complex to deal with in terms of exact solution. Therefore, scenario tree size reduction is inevitable. Finally, to validate the proposed model several small and medium-sized problems are solved by GAMS software that indicates acceptable efficiency of the model. In addition, sensitivity analyses are made on budget and demand parameters to determine models behaviour upon these parameters.

Keywords: disaster management; evacuation process; disaster relief; uncertainties; fuzzy set theory; mathematical modelling; fuzzy logic; emergency management; emergency relief; fuzzy inference systems; FIS; travel times.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2016.077283

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2016 Vol.24 No.4, pp.466 - 488

Received: 01 Apr 2015
Accepted: 02 Jun 2015
Published online: 26 Jun 2016 *

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