Integer Linear Program Approach for Evacuation of Disaster Victims with Different Urgency Levels

Abstract

In the aftermath of natural disasters, optimal evacuation planning plays a crucial role in saving people's lives. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model for optimal planning for helicopters with different capabilities to save victims with different urgency levels. The model is formulated as an optimization problem whose objective is maximizing the number of evacuees under operational constraints such as helicopter's capacity and endurance and different urgency levels of victims. The proposed model is validated with an illustrative numerical example based on real-world data. © 2017