Fuzzy Multiple Objective Decision Making

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14

Multi-Objective Optimal

Planning for Designing

Relief Delivery Systems

Although minor earthquakes occur nearly every day, the effects of a strong earth-

quake are devastating. The Shaanxi earthquake, the deadliest in history, killed

830,000 in rural China in 1556. Recent fatal earthquakes took place in Taiwan

in September 1999, India in January 2001, Southeastern Iran in December 2003,

Sumatra in December 2004, and Pakistan in October 2005. Earthquakes have been

some of humankind’s major enemies in the battle against natural disasters.

The United Nations and the public and private sectors established many disaster-

prevention and disaster-recovery agencies and programs. The difculty with natural

disasters like earthquakes is that even though thousands of networked seismograph

stations are installed around the world and powerful computers continuously analyze

collected data, we are still unable to predict when and where an earthquake will

strike. Therefore, the most effective method to reduce the damage of a disaster is

prevention through research, monitoring, dissemination of information, and educa-

tion. Information coordination among related organizations is valuable and available

but more is required.

After an earthquake occurs, effective disaster recovery efforts can reduce

the death toll and damage and bring relief to surviving victims. These efforts

include the establishment of a rescue command center; collection of information

about the disaster area; identication of appropriate sites for shelters; determi-

nation of the best evacuation routes; arranging transportation for evacuation and

delivery of relief materials; and installation of medical, re prevention, and emer-

gency construction facilities. This study focuses on fair and effective distribution

of relief materials—making best efforts to ensure that required relief is distributed

to all demand points.

Sato and Ichii (1996) investigated the efciency of evacuations. Li et al. (1997)

investigated crisis management procedures such as trafc control on highways.

Tzeng and Chen (1999) conducted a study on scheduling programming for restora-

tion construction and salvaging for road networks. Although these studies provide

insights to various disaster recovery efforts, they make no mention of distribution of

emergency relief.

This chapter will concentrate on the effectiveness and fairness of the overall

distribution system to avoid the oversight of critical but difcult-to-reach areas

of the real world. A fuzzy multiple objective model was used for this study and