Optimal distribution of flood control and flooding emergency salavage materials

Natural disasters often result in loss and damage of flood control facilities or extend other damages. To reduce the loss and damage of human lives and properties, the authorities must urgently distribute flood control and flooding emergency salvage materials to the damaged points. In practice, the distribution and transportation of flood control and flooding emergency salvage materials are manually determined by staff with experience, without optimization from a systemic perspective, which is neither efficient in decision process nor effective in resource usage, and could even result in inproper decisions. In addition, there has not yet been any research on the optimal distribution of flood control and flooding emergency salavage materials. Therefore, in this research, referring to real practices we employ the time-space network flow technique to construct an optimization model, with the objective of minimizing the system operating cost, subject to the related operating constraints, for the authority to efficiently and effectively solve for the distribution and transportation of flood control and flooding emergency salavage materials. To evaluate the model in practice, we performed a case study, with reasonable assumptions, using the data collected from the warehouses storing flood control and flooding emergency salavage materials by the 10th River Management Bureau, Water Resource Agency, Ministry of Economic Affairs. The preliminary results were good, showing that the model could be useful reference for practice.