A Covering Tour Approach for Disaster Relief Locating and Routing with Fuzzy Demand

摘要

Optimizing the distribution and allocation of resources among individuals is one of the most important measures to be taken at thetime of crisis. Time, as a vital factor, has a significant impact on the increase in the number of people rescued by relief activities.This paper presents an allocation and routing model for relief vehicles in the areas affected by a disaster. It uses a covering tourapproach to reduce response time. Moreover, because determining the exact amount of demand for essential goods in the event ofa disaster is very difficult and even impossible in some cases, the demand parameter is considered as a fuzzy parameter in thismodel. Accordingly, an optimization method is designed based on credibility theory, and a harmony search algorithm withrandom simulation is developed. Finally, the efficiency of the harmony search algorithm is analyzed by comparing the CPLEXsolver and GRASP algorithm. The results show that the proposed algorithm performs well over a short operating time.