Optimization Online, vol.1, no.1, pp.1, 2021 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
Urban evacuation management is challenging to implement as it requires planning and coordination over a
large geographical area. To address these challenges and to bolster evacuation planning and management,
joint supply and demand management strategies should be considered. In this study, we explore and jointly
optimize evacuate or shelter-in-place, dynamic resource allocation, and staging decisions for an efficient
evacuation plan that minimizes total risk exposure of the population threatened by a sudden onset disaster.
We introduce a Cell Transmission Model based mathematical formulation and propose an exact solution
methodology based on Benders decomposition. We further enhance the efficiency of the algorithm by solving
the Benders subproblem using a network flow-based formulation on a time expanded network and generating valid inequalities for the master problem. We conduct extensive numerical experiments using realistic
instances to test the effectiveness of the algorithm and to derive managerial insights. We find that considering
evacuate or SIP, staging, and dynamic resource allocation decisions jointly, contributes significantly to the
efficiency of the evacuation operations. A zone-based approach where some zones are ordered to evacuate
while others shelter-in-place is superior to other approaches where an evacuate or SIP decision is given for
all population at risk.