1655. A heuristic approach for disaster response - matching and scheduling unaffiliated spontaneous volunteers
Invited abstract in session TC-15: Heuristic Search 3, stream Combinatorial Optimization.
Tuesday, 12:30-14:00Room: Esther Simpson 1.08
Authors (first author is the speaker)
| 1. | Martina Sperling
|
| Department of Management Information Systems, Paderborn University | |
| 2. | Guido Schryen
|
| Department of Management Information Systems, Paderborn University |
Abstract
In large-scale disasters, such as natural or man-made catastrophes and pandemics, the shortage of resources and personnel can limit the effectiveness of rescue efforts. At the same time, many civilians are eager to help their communities. Unaffiliated spontaneous volunteers play an important role in improving disaster response, but coordinating them is a major challenge for relief organizations (e.g., Red Cross, fire departments). Effectively managing these volunteers requires careful planning, clear communication, and a good understanding of available resources, all of which can significantly influence the outcome for those affected.
Coordinating spontaneous volunteers using exact methods can be computationally challenging due to the NP-hard complexity of our problem. While exact methods provide high-quality solutions, they often lack the runtime efficiency needed in urgent scenarios. We propose a greedy heuristic, which balances runtime efficiency with solution quality. Using data from a real-world flood scenario, the approach is compared to an exact method using the Gurobi solver. The results show that the heuristic is a viable alternative for relief organizations, offering a good balance between speed and solution quality.
Keywords
- Disaster and Crisis Management
- Scheduling
Status: accepted
Back to the list of papers