Resources allocation in emergency response using an interdependencies simulation environment

Abstract

Natural and man-made disasters cause tremendous losses every year. Recent events, such as Hurricane Katrina and Sandy, have revealed the need for coordinated and effective emergency responses. In order to reduce human lives and economic losses, available resources should be allocated efficiently. Emergency responders are increasingly being challenged by the size and complexity of critical infrastructures that provide vital resources for emergency response operations. In this paper, we propose an integrated simulation-optimization tool for assisting emergency responders in finding the optimal allocation of available resources during a disaster event. The proposed tool utilizes the Infrastructure Interdependencies Simulator (i2Sim) for modeling the critical infrastructures that provides the available resources such as power and water. An optimization agent is developed based on a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to interact with the i2Sim simulator. We use this integrated simulation-optimization tool to address the problem of resources allocation during a disaster event. The objective of the optimization problem is maximizing the operational capacity of a critical infrastructure, a hospital in this case. The problem formulation incorporates the physical interdependencies between critical infrastructures in emergency response operations. This paper describes early results of our work that shows the use of our approach in optimizing resources allocation in a simulated disaster event.