A continuous approximation approach for assessment routing in disaster relief

Authors
Huang, Michael ; Smilowitz, Karen R. ; Balcik, Burcu

In this paper, we focus on the routing problem which routes teams to different communities to assess damage and relief needs following a . To address time-sensitivity, the routing problem is modeled with the objective of minimizing the sum of arrival times to beneficiaries. We propose a continuous approximation approach which uses aggregated instance data to develop routing policies and cost approximations. Numerical tests are performed that demonstrate the effectiveness of the cost approximations at predicting the true implementation costs of the policies and compare the policies against more complex approaches. The continuous approximation approach yields solutions which can be easily implemented; further, this approach reduces the for detailed data and the computational requirements to solve the problem.

Codebooks
SLR Criteria
Summary

Data gathered is compared to a tabu search

SLR Criteria
Summary

Literature review, Algorithm development, Testing

Summary

CostImplementation complexitysum of arrival times

Summary

Literature review of existing SolutionsDevelopment of the new algorithm for VRP with artificial tests, with regards to the objective function. Comparison with tabu search

SLR Criteria
Summary

computational tests to evaluate the approximation and the performance of the continuous approximation modelTest based on synthetic data

SLR Criteria
Summary

In this study, we study the routing problem (ARP), which focuses on routing of teams in the area. The objective of the ARP is to minimize the sum of arrival times at communities, which reflects the time sensitive nature of relief efforts. We develop a continuous approximation model for the ARP.

Summary

While a simplified setting is used to illustrate the analysis, the ideas presented can be adapted for service regions of different dimensions, different locations of the depot and non-constant demand densities.

SLR Criteria
Summary

we show how a continuous model may be used to generate easy-to-solve policies for the ARP, approximations to evaluate these policies, and hybrid solutions which can be generated with modest computing resourcesOur numerical tests show that the approximations for the policy can approximate the true cost of implementing the policy quickly and accuratelyThe successful use of aggregate data also suggest that the policy solutions are insensitive to parameter error, which is important in the humanitarian context given the limited information.

SLR Criteria
Summary

we focus on the routing problem which routes teams to different communities to assess damage and relief needs following a

eu Portfolio of Solutions web site has been initially developed in the scope of DRIVER+ project. Today, the service is managed by AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH., for the benefit of the European Management. PoS is endorsed and supported by the Disaster Competence Network Austria (DCNA) as well as by the STAMINA and TeamAware H2020 projects.