Optimized resource allocation for emergency response after earthquake disasters

The main goal of the initial search-and-rescue period after strong earthquakes is to minimize the total number of fatalities. One important difficulty arising in this period is to find the best assignment of available resources to operational areas. For this problem a dynamic optimization model is introduced. The model uses detailed descriptions of the operational areas and of the available resources to calculate the resource performance and efficiency for different tasks related to the response. An adequate solution method for the model is presented as well. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.