Abstract

Planning, organizing, and managing logistics activities by humanitarian organizations before and after a disaster like a flood, plays an important role in the minimization of public suffering. This thesis investigates two crucial issues that define disaster relief network designs; these are the presence of physical barriers, such as flooded regions of different impacts, and the effect or lack of information sharing. It is common that natural and/or man-made disasters cause major disruptions in critical infrastructure. The availability and proper dissemination of information amongst key players provides efficient operations which are reflected in minimizing suffering. The integrated model analyzes six barrier - information sharing scenarios using modern decision support tools, such as geographic information systems and optimization tools. Montreal districts' populations and road network map are used for the investigation. First, Demand is forecasted based on flood damage estimates, locating central warehouses follows, then allocating regional warehouses, and finally routing solutions are computed. Both location-allocation and routing integrated models take capacity into consideration. The findings are, the lack of information sharing and the presence of barriers cause increase in travel distance as opposed to having full information disclosure and no barriers. Total distance traveled in the presence of scaled-cost-barriers were more than that of having forbidden-zone-barriers or no-barriers.