Coordinating debris cleanup operations in post disaster road networks

We propose a constructive heuristic that generates roadside debris cleanup plans for a limited number of equipment in the post-disaster road recovery planning problem. Travel times between cleanup tasks are not pre-fixed but depend on the blockage status of the entire road network at the time of travel. We develop a novel mathematical model that maximizes cumulative network accessibility throughout the cleanup operation and minimizes makespan. We propose several practical and robust task selection rules that favor one or both goals that are tested on realistic size road networks with deterministic and stochastic debris cleanup times. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.