Double Ant Colony System to Improve Accessibility after a Disaster

Abstract

We propose a novel double ant colony system to deal with accessibility issues after a natural or man-made disaster. The aim is to maximize the number of survivors that reach the nearest regional center (center of economic and social activity in the region) in a minimum time by planning which rural roads damaged by the disaster should be repaired given the available financial and human resources. The proposed algorithm is illustrated by means of a large instance based on the Haiti natural disasters in August-September 2008.