| dc.description.abstract | Natural disasters, such as earthquakes and typhoons, are inevitable and inflict devastating effects, in terms of human injuries and property damage. These damages can disrupt the traffic and lifeline systems, obstructing the operation of rescue machines, rescue vehicles, ambulances and relief workers. Most of the emergency repair models in the past were formulated neglecting logistical support. In practice, to reduce the risk of repair work and the length of repair time, work teams do not return to their work stations. Rescue machinery, fuel and other resources are supplied to the work teams by support units. If the demand of repair work teams is not supplied in time, the schedule of repair work would be delayed, which will not only affect the rescue efficiency but can also increase human injuries.
Hence, in this research we will employ network flow techniques to construct a logistical support scheduling model. We consider minimizing the total cost for logistical support, as well as the time windows based on the emergency repair schedule and related operating constraints, to develop a model for planning logistical support schedules within a limited time. In the modeling a time-space network for logistical support and each material are constructed. A number of operational constraints between these networks according to real constraints are set. Our model is formulated as a mixed-integer, multiple-commodity network flow problem that is characterized as NP-hard. To efficiently solve realistically large problems occurring in practice, we develop a heuristic. Then, to evaluate the model and the solution algorithm, we perform a case study on personal computers, using real data of the 1999 Chi-chi earthquake in Taiwan. The preliminary results are good, showing that the model could be useful for the logistical support scheduling. | en_US |