الملخص الإنجليزي
As one of the outcomes of climate change, humanity faces more and more natural
disasters. Storms and floods are among the most frequent disasters occurring in
different parts of the world. Disaster Operations Management (DOM), which aims to
save lives and eliminate or reduce the impacts of disasters, consists of mitigation,
preparedness, response, and recovery phases. This study considers the Shelter
Location Optimization and Relief Supply Management (SLORSM) problem, one of
the essential problems under the preparedness phase of DOM for cyclones, storms
and floods. The problem consists of selecting shelters to be opened among
predetermined alternatives and distributing the relief supplies to these shelters. In
addition, it addresses when to open the selected shelters and when and how much
relief supplies are to be shipped to each shelter based on the estimated scenarios of
the route and severity of the cyclone, storm and flood. This study aims to formulate
and develop solution methods for this problem. Accordingly, a Mixed Integer
Programming (MIP) formulation for this optimization problem followed by a
decomposition-based heuristic algorithm are proposed to solve this complex
combinatorial problem. Furthermore, an extensive computational study is conducted
to test the performance of the proposed MIP model and heuristic algorithm. To this
end, real data of the Sultanate of Oman was solved as a case study. The heuristic
model performed well and was able to solve the complete model with good quality
results in a reasonable time which meet the requirement during the emergency
situation. The detailed analyses of the obtained results provide insights for the
decision-makers and researchers for future research direction.
