Vehicle Routing for Medical Supplies in Large-Scale Emergencies∗

A typical Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is to design the least cost routes for a vehicle fleet to supply goods from inventory to demanding customer locations. In this paper, we are interested in routing vehicles to minimize unmet demand and time delays. An important application of the presented model is to distribute medical supplies to response to large-scale emergencies, such as natural disasters, decease outbreaks, or acts of terrorism in which the supplies must be sent to cover all demands in the recommended response time. In this situation, transportation cost is the least important because it is unmet demand and/or time delay in an emergency situation that result in loss of life. We formulate a new model that describes the vehicle routing problem for large-scale emergency scenario. A quick heuristic algorithm is designed to obtain a fleet dispatching plan. This algorithm can be very useful for emergency responder to best use the available vehicles in case of emergencies.