01660973

Component

The recurrence of natural and man-made disasters prompted the research of effective logistic operations to quickly address the needs of afflicted communities. Relief operations have to manage various complexities that range from limited information and communication, the need to coordinate between multiple agents, and uncertainty in supply, demand and state of the transportation network. There are multiple examples in which failure of the road network hindered relief operations. This paper proposes deploying inexpensive unmanned aerial devices (a.k.a. drones) along with trucks as a solution to overcome this problem. The drones then equip decision makers with two additional pieces of information regarding the state of the road network ahead and the fleet and relief supplies. This then helps update the routing plan accordingly. This paper presents a dynamic programming approach to solve the routing problem with a focus on the state of the infrastructure. The program seeks paths with maximum reliability then a math program solves for the optimal package distribution. The model is then tested on earthquake-prone Ercis, a town in Turkey. The results show that there is value in the information transmitted by drones especially when the network state is highly uncertain.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABR20 Standing Committee on the Logistics of Disaster Response and Business Continuity.

18-06285

English

0000-0002-8443-8928

19p

2018

Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Maps; References; Tables

Disaster relief; Disasters and emergency operations; Drones; Routes and routing

Ercis (Turkey)

Data and Information Technology; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Security and Emergencies

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2018 Paper #18-06285

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 8 2018 11:37AM