Disaster Logistics: Route Optimization for Air Rescue Units

Natural disasters are uncontrollable and often unpredictable events that affect many countries yearly. After a disaster, the response phase is crucial for the rescue of disaster victims. Rescue helicopters play an essential role in this phase. However, the costs of using these aerial rescue units are high. Vehicle routing is a class of combinatorial optimization problems widely used in supply chain management and logistics. The management of a natural disaster is considered an event-driven logistics. This paper aims to apply a vehicle routing methodology to optimize the routes of rescue helicopters in natural disasters, ensuring greater efficiency in allocating these resources, aiming to maximize the number of rescued victims and reduce the costs of operations.