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A New Ant Colony-Based Methodology for Disaster Relief

Author

Listed:
  • José M. Ferrer

    (Department of Financial and Actuarial Economics & Statistics, Interdisciplinary Mathematics Institute, Complutense University of Madrid, HUMLOG Research Group, 28040 Madrid, Spain)

  • M. Teresa Ortuño

    (Department of Statistics and Operational Research, Interdisciplinary Mathematics Institute, Complutense University of Madrid, HUMLOG Research Group, 28040 Madrid, Spain)

  • Gregorio Tirado

    (Department of Financial and Actuarial Economics & Statistics, Interdisciplinary Mathematics Institute, Complutense University of Madrid, HUMLOG Research Group, 28040 Madrid, Spain)

Abstract

Humanitarian logistics in response to large scale disasters entails decisions that must be taken urgently and under high uncertainty. In addition, the scarcity of available resources sometimes causes the involved organizations to suffer assaults while transporting the humanitarian aid. This paper addresses the last mile distribution problem that arises in such an insecure environment, in which vehicles are often forced to travel together forming convoys for security reasons. We develop an elaborated methodology based on Ant Colony Optimization that is applied to two case studies built from real disasters, namely the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the 2005 Niger famine. There are very few works in the literature dealing with problems in this context, and that is the research gap this paper tries to fill. Furthermore, the consideration of multiple criteria such as cost, time, equity, reliability, security or priority, is also an important contribution to the literature, in addition to the use of specialized ants and effective pheromones that are novel elements of the algorithm which could be exported to other similar problems. Computational results illustrate the efficiency of the new methodology, confirming it could be a good basis for a decision support tool for real operations.

Suggested Citation

  • José M. Ferrer & M. Teresa Ortuño & Gregorio Tirado, 2020. "A New Ant Colony-Based Methodology for Disaster Relief," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-23, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jmathe:v:8:y:2020:i:4:p:518-:d:340847
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    References listed on IDEAS

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