| dc.description.abstract | Taiwan is frequently hit by natural disasters such as typhoons and seasonal floods due to the fact that it is located right on the pathway of typhoons from the western Pacific Ocean and that all its rivers are relatively short and steep, incapable of containing torrential rain. According to the statistics by the Water Resource Agency, the average annual loss caused by natural disasters reached NT$12.8 billion in the past 13 years. Natural disasters not only result in the loss and damage of human lives and properties but also make negative impact on the national economic development. To reduce the loss and damage of human lives and properties, the Regulations on River Management stipulate that, in order to meet the needs in a flooding emergency, river management agencies must set up warehouse on appropriate sites along the river to store flood control and flooding emergency equipments and materials. “Flooding emergency” refers to measures taken to stop the situation from worsening as soon as flood control facilities have been damaged. In the past, how to allocate and transport the flood control and flooding emergency materials was decided pragmatically by people, which lacked optimal systematic analysis. Even though the strategy could handle the situation, it did not achieve the optimal effect. Accordingly, given the scarcity of the materials and the urgency of transporting them, this study aims to build a model of allocating and transporting the flood control and flooding emergency materials so that the policy makers can optimize the routing within the shortest period of time.
We will employ network flow techniques including both time-space network of emergency transportation flow and that of flooding emergency materials flow. Depending on the different essences of flooding emergency materials, the multiple time-space networks include various time-space network of transportation flow which specifically corresponds to the time-space network of each different emergency material flow. A formula has been developed to arrange the routing of truck flow and material flow; nevertheless, the routing is also simultaneously modified by the practical operational procedures. Fundamentally, the model deals with multiple layers of networks matching transportation flows with various material flows. The model expectedly formulated as a mixed integer multiple commodity network flow problem. Since the problem size is expected to huge, we will develop a algorithm, which employs C computer language with the assistance of a mathematical programming solver, to solve the problem. To evaluate the model and the solution algorithm, we will perform a case study using the data collected from the warehouses storing flood control and flooding emergency materials by the 10th River Management Bureau, Water Resource Agency, Ministry of Economic Affairs, the result shows that the effectiveness achieved by applying the model is better than that by pragmatic decisions. Finally, the conclusions and suggestions will be given. | en_US |