Multi-period allocation of ambulances to casualty cluster in a disaster relief operation with uncertain demand

Casualty relief in a disaster is one of the most important issues in emergency management. After the occurrence of a natural disaster, such as earthquakes, it is difficult to determine the precise casualty number due to lack of useful and effective information. In order to describe the uncertainty feature of the casualty, Scenario Analyze Method (SAM) is adopted, and multi-period robust optimization model on ambulances allocation (MROAA) are given based on multiple scenarios. Solution procedure for MROAA is presented also, which solves problem in two phases consisting of a sequence of knapsack problems and a shortest path procedure, respectively. A preprocessing rule which drastically reduces computation time of the algorithm is also introduced. Finally, results of the proposed model and algorithm are illustrated via a hypothetical earthquake case study.