A Simulated Annealing-Based Approach for Aid Distribution in Post-disaster Scenarios

Abstract

Logistics operations have a direct impact on the effectiveness of the humanitarian relief operations and the survival of the population, supplying all demands in a short period of time using the available limited resources. This work addresses the Emergency k-Location Routing Problem (EkLRP) where humanitarian and relief aid has to be distributed from medical infrastructure to the affected people by routing emergency-aimed vehicles minimizing the time required to provide the humanitarian aid. This work proposes a Simulated Annealing with temperature reset in order to promote diversification as well as for escaping from local optima. The numerical experiments indicate that the metaheuristic approach proposed to solve the EkLRP reports high-quality solutions in reasonable computational times.