Route selection for emergency logistics management: A bio-inspired algorithm

• Published in: Safety science 2013-04, Vol.54, p.87-91
• Main Authors: Zhang, Xiaoge, Zhang, Zili, Zhang, Yajuan, Wei, Daijun, Deng, Yong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bio-inspired; Biological and medical sciences; Emergency logistics management; Medical sciences; Miscellaneous; Public health. Hygiene; Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine; Route selection
• ISSN: 0925-7535; 1879-1042
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ssci.2012.12.003

► A new bio-inspired route selection model for emergency logistics management is presented in this paper. ► The travel speed is regarded as a factor influenced by the extension of the disaster. ► Both the path length and the travel time are taken into consideration. Route selection is one of the fundamental problems in emergency logistics management, which plays an important role in real applications. A various paper has been produced to deal with route selection problem, in which the travel time on each arc of the logistics network is a constant. However, the travel speed will change with the extension of the disaster, especially under disasters like hurricane, flood, etc. To address this issue, a novel bio-inspired method is proposed to solve this problem. Furthermore, both the travel time and the path length are taken into consideration. The proposed approach solves how to choose the optimal path from the optional choices. A case study is utilized to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method. The result shows that the proposed method is effective in dealing with the route selection problem for emergency logistics management.