Research on real-time vehicle scheduling problem to rescue victims from biochemical terrorist attacks

In this paper, we investigate the real-time vehicle scheduling problem for rescuing victims with constraint of the prime rescue time under the context of multi-location biochemical terrorist attacks (BTAs). A mathematical model is proposed to choose available hospitals for each victim point according to the prime rescue time and dispatch vehicles to transport victims to hospitals depending on the hospitals´ treatment capacity. Considering the real-time information (the number of new infection victims, the changed treatment capacity of hospitals), an algorithm with an event-time vector is designed to solve the mathematics model and get an optimal vehicle scheme.