October 31, 2011 at 8:00AM - October 31, 2011 at 9:00AM
MIT Room E62-650
Dynamic Multi-Period Humanitarian Relief Routing Problem
Irina Dolinskaya
Northwestern University
Abstract
Disaster relief presents many unique logistics challenges, with problems including damaged transportation infrastructure, limited communication, and coordination of multiple agents. Central to disaster relief logistics is the distribution of life-saving commodities to beneficiaries. Operations research models have potential to help relief agencies save lives and money, maintain standards of humanitarianism and fairness and maximize the use of limited resources amid post-disaster chaos. This talk presents our ongoing research in last mile operations of disaster relief. First, we discuss how transportation networks are represented both in operations research models and in practice. We discuss implications of network assumptions in both modeling and implementation. Next, we focus on modeling and solution of the multi-vehicle relief distribution problem over a multi-day planning horizon, where each beneficiary is visited multiple times. We solve a multi-day routing problem for the vehicle fleet by decomposing the problem into a two-stage model: a period vehicle routing model that assigns each vehicle to a delivery zone for the planning horizon, and a single-vehicle dynamic routing model within each assigned zone.
This is a joint work with Luis de la Torre and Karen Smilowitz
Bio
Irina Dolinskaya is an assistant professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern University. She obtained M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan, and B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Florida.
Her research interests include operations research with emphasis on large scale and computationally demanding dynamic programming problems, optimal path finding in evolving systems, and effective planning under limited information. Applications include problems in humanitarian logistics, optimum vessel performance in evolving nonlinear wavefields, and autonomous navigation for amphibious vehicles.
Dr. Dolinskaya is the winner of the 2010 INFORMS Transportation Science & Logistics Society Dissertation Prize. She is also the 2008 recipient of the Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Military Applications.