Vehicle routing and re-routing in emergency logistics

Abstract

In disaster relief, the timing and arrangement of emergency supply distributions are crucial in order to achieve better responses and to minimize causalities and suffering. This project aims to develop an optimization model using mixed integer programming to suit the needs of emergency logistics in disaster relief. The model provides the optimization for vehicle routing and re-routing for the distribution of emergency supplies by modelling emergency supply distribution centers as supply nodes and destinations as demand nodes as a vehicle routing problem. The model is then solved using the Gurobi solver on neoserver. Further analysis was also conducted to look into various scenarios in relief transport operations and the corresponding changes to the model input and results.