A Fuzzy Integer Programming Model to Locate Temporary Medical Facilities as Part of Pre-Disaster Management

The number and the scale of natural disasters have drastically increased over the last decades. One of the most vital stages of disaster preparedness is disaster response planning, and it plays an important role in limiting material and immaterial consequences, such as those caused by large scale earthquakes. In order to minimize human suffering and death, the aim of establishing a well-designed humanitarian relief chain must be to provide medicine, water, shelter, emergency food and supplies to the affected areas. From a holistic perspective, providing timely first aid and rapid transfer of injured victims to a medical facility is one of the most essential component of such chain. Thus, the location of first aid hospitals must be determined following a careful thought and planning process. This study presents a fuzzy integer programming model to determine the best location of the temporary hospitals which are expected to support extant state hospitals after a major earthquake. This study applies the proposed fuzzy model to the Üsküdar province of Istanbul and identifies optimum number and locations of field hospitals for a severe earthquake scenario.