Measuring and Achieving Equity in Multiperiod Emergency Material Allocation

AbstractEmergency material allocation is an important part of postdisaster emergency logistics that is significant for improving rescue effectiveness and reducing disaster losses. However, the traditional single ‐period allocation model often causes local surpluses or shortages and high cost, and prevents the system from achieving an equitable or optimal multiperiod allocation. To achieve equitable allocation of emergency materials in the case of serious shortages relative to the demand by victims, this a rticle introduces a multiperiod model for allocation of emergency materials to multiple affected locations (using an exponential utility function to reflect the disutility loss due to material shortfalls), and illustrates the relationship between equity of allocations and the cost of emergency respo nse. Finally, numerical examples are presented to demonstrate both the feasibility and the usefulness of the proposed model for achieving multiperiod equitable allocation of emergency material among multiple disaster locations. The results indicate that the introduction of a nonlinear utility functi on to reflect the disutility of large shortfalls can make the material allocation fairer, and minimize large losses due to shortfalls. We found that achieving equity has a significant but not unreasonable impact on emergency costs. We also illustrate that using differing utility functions for differ ent types of materials adds an important dimension of flexibility.

Source: Risk Analysis - June 5, 2019 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Yanyan Wang, Vicki M. Bier, Baiqing Sun Tags: Original Research Article Source Type: research