Two-Stage Robust Counterpart Model for Humanitarian Logistics Management

In the early stages of a major public emergency, decision-makers were troubled by the timely distribution of a large number of donations. In order to distribute caring materials reasonably and efficiently, considering the transportation cost and time delay cost, this paper takes the humanitarian logistics management as an example to study the scheduling problem. Based on the actual situation of insufficient supply during the humanitarian logistics management, this paper using optimization theory establishes a two-stage stochastic chance constrained (TS-SCC) model. In addition, due to the randomness of emergency occurrence and uncertainty of demand, the TS-SCC model is further transformed into the two-stage robust counterpart (TS-RC) model. At the same time, the validity of the model and the efficiency of the algorithm are verified by simulations. The result shows that the model and algorithm constructed are capable to obtain the distribution scheme of caring materials even in worst case. In the TS-BRC (with box set) model, the logistics service level increased from 89.83% to 93.21%, while in the TS-BPRC (with mixed box and polyhedron set) model, it increases from 90.32% to 94.96%. Besides, the model built in this paper can provide a more reasonable dispatching plan according to the actual situation of caring material supply.