Multi-objective route optimization of transporting emergency goods and materials for rescue

A mathematical model of the optimum route for transporting goods and materials during a disaster period was built by using the graph theory and multi-objective optimization method. For the simple case of a dual-objective optimization, an approximate and fast algorithm was proposed based on the heuristic algorithm and then we extended the promotion to other transportation route optimization problems, which contain 3 and more than 3 optimization goals. The dynamic network routing problem was transferred into a static network routing problem by introducing the time-expanded graph in dynamic network flow analysis, which can provide an appropriate method for selecting the optimum route of transporting emergency goods and materials. The purposes of the algorithm are to call Dijstra algorithm to calculate the model by constructing several decision support functions and to find the optimal solution in the search space constituted by the auxiliary functions, so the algorithm is a fast and approximate algorithm. The algorithm was tested in a random road network and a real road network, and the results are consistent with theoretical analysis in the text. The test results show that the algorithm has a better effect in solving the multi-objective route optimization problem of transporting emergency goods and materials and its solution efficiency is higher.