Heuristics for Solving Problem of Evacuating Non-Ambulatory People in a Short-Notice Disaster

Abstract

As Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations gain importance, a number of problems become evident. The time-sensitive problem of evacuating non-ambulatory people from a disaster area proves to be a challenging combinatorial optimization problem. The scope of the problem is defined by drawing analogies to similar vehicle routing problems that have been previously addressed. Based on the basic Max-Min Ant System (MMAS) algorithm modeled after the behavior of ants seeking food, potential solution approaches to this problem are enhanced to improve quality and efficiency by hybridizing features such as a best solution list, elite ants, ranked contribution system, and heuristic procedures during route construction. Using a Nearly-Orthogonal Latin Hypercubes (NOLH) experimental design, the algorithm parameters are tuned for best empirical performance for a range of test scenarios.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2012
Accession Number
ADA576323

Entities

People

  • Andres Pico
  • Yong H. Tan

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Business Administration
  • Computational Science
  • Computers
  • Disasters
  • Emergency Response
  • Evolutionary Algorithms
  • Flow Network
  • Health Services
  • Heuristic Methods
  • Humanitarian Assistance
  • Integer Programming
  • Mathematical Models
  • Mathematical Programming
  • Operations Research
  • Optimization
  • Particle Swarm Optimization

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Emergency Management and Homeland Security.
  • Operations Research