Joint Scheduling Of Post-earthquake Road Repair And Relief Distribution

Emergency road repair and distribution of relief goods are crucial for post-earthquake response. However, interrelationships between those two tasks are not adequately considered in their work schedules, especially in cases with very limited repair resources, leading to unnecessary delay and expenditure. This study attempts to develop a joint scheduling model to better describe the constraints arising from the interrelationships between the road repair and relief distribution work. In particular, influence of weather on the repair work efficiency is considered, and demand urgent level is also incorporated into the model. And then a time-space network model is constructed for deriving the optimal solution, followed by an ant-colony based heuristic algorithm. In addition, considering the possible deviation in weather forecasting which may lead to the failure of the model result, dynamic criticality of damaged point is for the first time introduced in this study as well as a simulation method to evaluate it. It could offer significant reference for decision makers when deciding whether a damaged point should be included in the repair schedule. A case study of Wenchuan Earthquake is exhibited to validate the planning tool and to demonstrate its feasibility for resolving real world problem.