Optimizing emergency sortie and storm evasion planning.

This thesis develops an optimization model for scheduling sorties of surface ships and submarines that are required to plan for port evacuation during hurricane conditions. At present, Emergency Sortie Plans are prepared manually by the Port Operations schedulers and often do not utilize the limited pilot and tug resources most efficiently. The optimization model introduced in this thesis generates an Emergency Sortie Plan that minimizes the time required to reach the recommended Hurricane Evasion Point, evacuates all seaworthy ships, most efficiently utilizes the available pilots and tugs, and observes necessary safety constraints on basin congestion, nested berthing, and tidal-restricted ships. In a test of the model using data for Naval Station Norfolk during Hurricane Andrew, the model evacuated the ships 40 minutes earlier than the actual 11 hour schedule. In only 22 minutes on a personal computer the model provided a realistic estimate of the minimum time required to complete an Emergency Sortie, based on known information, not educated guesses.http://archive.org/details/optimizingemerge1094539930Lieutenant Commander, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited