Purpose

There is usually a considerable shortage of resources and a lack of accurate data about the demand amount in a post-disaster situation. This paper aims to model the distribution and redistribution of relief items. When the new data on demand and resources become available the redistribution of previously delivered items may be necessary due to severe shortages in some locations and surplus inventory in other areas.

Design/methodology/approach

The presented model includes a vehicle routing problem in the first period and some network flow structures for succeeding periods of each run. Thereby, it can produce itineraries and loading plans for each vehicle in all periods when it is run in a rolling horizon manner. The fairness in distribution is sought by minimizing the maximum shortage of commodities among the affected areas while considering operational costs. Besides, equity of welfare in different periods is taken into account.

Findings

The proposed model is evaluated by a realistic case study. The results show that redistribution and multi-period planning can improve efficiency and fairness in supply after the occurrence of a disaster.

Originality/value

This paper proposes an operational model for distribution and redistribution of relief items considering the differences of items characteristics. The model integrates two well-known structures, vehicle routing problem with pickup and delivery and network flow problem to take their advantages. To get more practical results, the model relaxes some simplifying assumptions commonly used in disaster relief studies. Furthermore, the model is used in a realistic case study.

中文翻译：

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一种新型结构，可在灾后形势中模拟救灾物资的分配

目的

在灾后情况下，通常通常会严重缺乏资源，也缺乏关于需求量的准确数据。本文旨在对救济项目的分配和再分配进行建模。当新的按需和资源数据可用时，由于某些地区严重短缺而其他地区有剩余库存，则有必要重新分配以前交付的物品。

设计/方法/方法

所提出的模型包括第一阶段的车辆路径问题和每次运行的后续阶段的一些网络流量结构。因此，当其以滚动视野的方式行驶时，它可以在所有期间为每个车辆产生行程和装载计划。通过在考虑运营成本的同时将受影响地区之间最大的商品短缺最小化来寻求分配的公平性。此外，还要考虑不同时期的福利公平性。

发现

通过一个实际的案例研究评估了提出的模型。结果表明，灾难发生后的重新分配和多期计划可以提高供应效率和公平性。

创意/价值

考虑到物品特性的差异，本文提出了一种救济物品分发和再分配的操作模型。该模型集成了两个众所周知的结构，即具有取送和运输的车辆路线问题以及网络流量问题，以利用它们的优势。为了获得更多实际结果，该模型放宽了一些在救灾研究中常用的简化假设。此外，该模型还用于实际案例研究中。