An Ant Colony-based Heuristic Algorithm for Joint Scheduling of Post-earthquake Road Repair and Relief Distribution

Abstract

Emergency road repair and distribution of relief goods are crucial for post-earthquake response. However, interrelationships between those two tasks are not adequately considered in their work schedules, especially in cases with very limited repair resources, leading to unnecessary delay and expenditure. A time-space network model is constructed to better describe the constraints arising from the interrelationships in joint scheduling of road repair and relief distribution works. An ant colony-based heuristic algorithm is developed to solve the NP-hard model efficiently for practical use, followed by a case study of Wenchuan earthquake to validate the planning tool and to demonstrate its feasibility for resolving real world problem.