Capacitated single-allocation hub location model for a flood relief distribution network

In disaster management, the logistics for disaster relief must deal with uncontrolled variables, including transportation difficulties, limited resources, and demand variations. In this work, an optimization model based on the capacitated single-allocation hub location problem is proposed to determine an optimal location of flood relief facilities with the advantage of economies of scale to transport commodities during a disaster. The objective is to minimize the total transportation cost, which depends on the flood severity. The travel time is bounded to ensure that survival packages will be delivered to victims in a reasonable time. Owing to complexity of the problem, a hybrid algorithm is developed based on a variable neighborhood search and tabu search (VNS-TS). The computational results show that the VNS found the optimal solutions within a 2% gap, while the proposed VNS-TS found the optimal solution with a 0% gap. A case study of severe flooding in Thailand is presented with consideration of related parameters such as water level, hub capacity, and discount factors. Sensitivity analyses on the number of flows, discount factors, capacity, and bound length are provided. The results indicated that demand variation has an impact on the transportation cost, number of hubs, and route patterns.