Emergency resource allocation problem: hazardous material accident scenarios in the ports of Northern Italy

Abstract

The resource allocation problem in case of emergency management represents a serious theme especially in the last years, when the occurrence of industrial disasters has become more frequent. Special attention has to be given to the emergency management in case of maritime or port accidents which involve hazardous material above all in MED cities where the seaport are part of the urban areas. The main challenge in emergency management is to define the optimal allocation of the available resources in timing and space in order to tackle, to mitigate and to recover effectively the hazardous event. In this paper, an optimal allocation problem has been formalized as a mathematical programming problem. The proposed model takes into account the dynamic of the first responders' availability at each node and the dynamic behavior of the hazard event to be faced. The problem minimizes the objective function that is the combination of resource allocation, damages, and transfer costs. The resources refer to extinguishing powers which may be generated by the fire fighters' teams of the fire stations available at each node of the network in a cooperative emergency management prospective. The model has been tested on a case study that concerns the simultaneous occurrence of two hazardous materials accidents in two ports located in Northern Italy.