The casualty transportation of Ebola outbreak in Liberia: A simulation study

Cho, Hyejin. M.S.I.E., Purdue University, May 2016, The Casualty Transportation of Ebola Outbreak in Liberia: A Simulation Study. Major Professors: Seokcheon Lee and Yuehwern Yih. In this paper, we have solved the unique problem of casualty transportation problem under Ebola by developing dynamic policies for vehicle routing to provide practical decision support. The objective of the proposed model is to minimize the total transmission risk. We describe the problem with real-constraints based on the empirical data of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Liberia. The casualty transportation problem is a variant of Dynamic Pick-up and Delivery Problems, in which a vehicle is dispatched to demand location in real time and it then transports the demands to the destination. DPDP integrates various sources of dynamic events as well as real-world aspects. All decision made in dynamic vehicle routing problems are taken in real-time. In same light, the casualty transportation problem is solved in real-time under infectious disease environment. Particularly in case of Ebola, the prompt burial or cremation of deceased Ebola victims would is critical in reducing the transmission of the virus thus casualty transportation problem should be considered mandatory to stop transmission. To solve the casualty transportation problem, our approach involves developing adequate policies for vehicle routing construction under Ebola situation, to evaluate those policies performance through simulations, and to recommend the best policy resulted from experimental results that can reduce the total transmission risk a lot.