Robust P-Median Model for Facility Location Problem Based on Scenario Analysis in Emergency Management

• Published in: 11th International Symposium on Operations Research and its Applications in Engineering, Technology and Management 2013 (ISORA 2013) pp. 20 - 23
• Main Authors: Zhu, Jianming, Huang, Jun, De-Gang, Liu
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Stevenage, UK IET 2013; The Institution of Engineering & Technology
• Subjects: Computational complexity; Interpolation and function approximation (numerical analysis); Systems theory applications in emergency management; approximation theory; emergency response; NP-hard; sensitivity analysis; disasters; emergency management; performance evaluation; decrease response time; facility location problem; facility location; emergency management ability improvement; scenario analysis; disaster district forecasting; forecasting theory; robust P-median model; approximation algorithm; disaster district uncertainty; facility deployment; computational complexity
• ISBN: 184919713X; 9781849197137
• DOI: 10.1049/cp.2013.2251

Uncertainty of disaster districts is an important character in emergency response, which brings great challenge for facility location decision before disasters. Many kinds of resources are reserved in these facilities in order to satisfy the requirement of affected districts. Careful deployment of facilities can decrease the response time and improve the ability of emergency management. In this paper, scenario analysis is proposed for forecasting disaster districts under uncertainty. In order to make robust decision, a robust p-median model is presented for facility location problem in dealing with the specified percent of affected districts. Since the robust model is NP-hard, an approximation algorithm is designed and theoretical ratio is analyzed. Finally, sensitivity analysis and performance evaluation for the proposed model and algorithm are shown by computational instances.