Emergency Shelter Resource Allocation and Location Analysis

This study formulates a mixed-integer facility location model to optimize emergency shelter location and resource allocation based on a set of existing candidate shelters. This model minimizes network access time between an affected census block and a potential emergency shelter, the operating costs of a shelter as a function of shelter capacity, and the cost of not accommodating all evacuees with emergency shelter capacity at the planning stage. This study consists of two parts, one conducting a sensitivity analysis for model parameters and executing the model for a worst case scenario and the second part expanding the model to include stochastic scenarios. In the first part of this study a sensitivity analysis of the model examines the impact of the model parameters. The sensitivity analysis and case study show that not only does the total number of shelters vary under different scenarios, but also the distribution in the sizes of recommended shelters. In the second part,9 scenarios were generated, varying storm severity and location of landfall. This stochastic element is included in the model to determine which shelters should be opened based on the probability of the different scenarios occurring. The application of the model including the stochastic element can be used by emergency planners because of the high level of uncertainty associated with the severity of a hurricane and location of landfall. A comparison of the results of the deterministic model and the stochastic model is presented in this study