Title: The analysis of an optimisation model for emergency vehicles scheduling in multi-mode layer networks

Authors: Yongsheng Qian; Jinlong Zhang; Junwei Zeng; Libin Fu; Xiaoping Guang; Xin Wang

Addresses: School of Traffic and Transportation, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou City, Gansu Province 730070, China ' School of Traffic and Transportation, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou City, Gansu Province 730070, China ' School of Traffic and Transportation, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou City, Gansu Province 730070, China ' School of Traffic and Transportation, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou City, Gansu Province 730070, China ' School of Traffic and Transportation, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou City, Gansu Province 730070, China ' Signal & Communication Research Institute, China Academy of Railway Sciences, Beijing 100081, China

Abstract: A series of paroxysmal events have occurred unceasingly around the world in recent years, and delivering the relief supplies to disaster areas in the shortest time is becoming a difficult problem in emergency logistics distribution system. A multi-mode layered network is introduced in this paper according to the function of nodes of emergency logistics networks, such as emergency logistics centre and demand centres, in the process of material circulation. Then, we design a multi-mode layered network to describe the behaviour of emergency supply transportation. On this basis, an objective function of emergency vehicles scheduling is proposed by analysing the constraints in the emergency logistics process, and a linear programming model based on an improved idea of maximum flow minimum cost is used to solve this problem. Finally, this model is calculated and analysed through a concrete example. The results show that the model is encouraging and can solve the issues of both urgency of transit time and the feature of road capacity in real life.

Keywords: emergency logistics centres; demand centres; multi-mode layered networks; optimisation; emergency vehicles; vehicle scheduling; relief supplies; relief delivery; disaster areas; emergency management; emergency supplies; emergency supply transport; linear programming; transit time; road capacity.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2016.075512

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2016 Vol.53 No.3, pp.270 - 278

Received: 02 Jan 2014
Accepted: 03 Jul 2014
Published online: 28 Mar 2016 *

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