A dynamic network disaster evacuation model to transport multi-priority patients

There are increasing numbers of natural disasters occurring worldwide, particularly in populated areas. Such events affect a large number of people causing injuries and fatalities. Providing rapid medical treatment is of utmost importance in such circumstances. The problem of transporting patients to medical facilities is a research problem that has been studied to some extent. One of the challenges is to find a policy that can maximize the number of survivors and minimize the total cost simultaneously under a given set of resource and geographic constraints. Here we propose an optimization model called Triage-Assignment-Transportation (TAT) model that decides on the tactical assignment of routing of different classes of emergency vehicles between staging areas and hospitals in the region. The model takes into account the capacities of the classes of vehicles, available resources at the hospitals, and the severity of the victims arrived at the staging areas. TAT is a mixed integer programming model with a dynamic shortest path algorithm. A sensitivity analysis is used to validate the model. TAT model can offer insight to decision makers about the number of staging areas, vehicles and hospital resources that are required to complete an evacuation based on the estimated number of victims.

A dynamic network disaster evacuation model to transport multi-priority patients Conference Paper