A bus allocation model for major industrial disasters

The presented research is part of a broader project DIEM-SSP - Disasters and Emergencies Management for Safety and Security in industrial Plants - aimed at managing major industrial emergencies by considering both medical and engineering/logistics issues. When a disaster occurs it is necessary to immediately provide relief plans. Many decision must be made in very short time, which may have a relevant impact on the consequences of the disaster. An efficient and smart exploitation of available resources it is necessary to mitigate damages. From a logistics point of view, one of the major issues in the event of a major industrial disaster (fire, explosion or toxic gas dispersion) is to evacuate the external population that can be affected by the disaster to specific evacuation-areas. The purpose of the research is to determine the optimal number and allocation of vehicles (buses) which must be involved in order to evacuate the population located in a defined risk-area around the emergency site and the optimal location for evacuation-areas. For that reason a dynamic version of the Bus Allocation Problem is proposed using a Mixed Integer Programming Model.