A multi-category emergency goods distribution model and its algorithm

When large scale emergency incident happens, the multi-category emergency goods distribution is a complex problem. To improve structure and efficiency of emergency goods distribution, a multi-objective non-linear optimization programming model for emergency goods distribution is established. Modeling precondition is analyzed in detail, some objectives such as minimizing the waiting time, the transportation cost, the preference of selecting emergency commodity distribution center (ECDC) and so on are taken into account. The constraints of the model including total demand quantity and structure of disaster area, the transportation quantity and time from each ECDC are considered. The penalty factor method is employed to transform above model into an easy one, then GA is employed. The encoding system for multi-category emergency goods distribution is introduced, and the basic implement steps of GA are given in detail. The typical instance abstracted from practice is adopted to validate the validity of above model and algorithm, the experiment result shows that above model can describe the practical demand of multi-category emergency goods distribution, and GA is suitable for solving some complex non-linear programming problems such as multi-category emergency goods distribution. Above model and algorithm will benefit for the emergency goods distribution practice.