Model and algorithm of routes planning for emergency relief distribution in disaster management with disaster information update

Emergency relief distribution plays a vital role during disaster responding. This paper studies routes selection and transportation time moment selection for emergency relief distribution along with disaster information updating. This paper derives a new definition for route reliability, which is a combination of multiple routes according to three factors: reliability of each edge, the number of dissimilar detour paths, and dissimilarity of multiple routes. Transportation time moment is determined according to disaster information updating accuracy rate. A multi-objective mathematical programming is formulated for route planning problem. The objective function consists route reliability and information accuracy rate. Then we present an ant colony optimization algorithm to solve this problem. Disaster information update process is clarified, as well as propose a new way to evaluate multiple routes reliability and applying an improved ant colony optimization algorithm. Finally, an earthquake around Ludian in Yunnan Provence is considered as a disaster scenario to analyze our model and algorithm, include the optimal solution, parameters’ impact on objective function, and performance of our algorithms.