Xiang Li, OSU-Visiting-Scholar, Professor & Associate Dean, School of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University will present: Spatial Operational Research and Its Application in Emergency Services.
The potential of GIS has been integrated into operational research to facilitate optimally solving problems involving spatial data. In this presentation, some examples in emergency services are given, and a series of algorithms for making evacuation plans are introduced in detail. During a large-scale evacuation in response to extreme disasters, limited traffic infrastructure is often inadequate to entertain extremely large traffic volume generated within a short period, and a simultaneous evacuation accompanied with spontaneous behaviors can lead to disorder and conflict and seriously prolong the process. A pre-defined staged evacuation plan is, therefore, required. This paper presents a method to facilitate making such a plan. Through employing an algorithm to schedule the departure time of each evacuation group, the method can guarantee that the time of completing a large-scale evacuation is very close to its theoretically shortest evacuation time. Additionally, a few more efforts have been made to extend its application to groups with various speeds, to multiple exits, and to indoor space.
