Location of natural disasters search and rescue (SAR) units in sectors

Abstract

Disasters are extreme events that cause great loss of life and property and create severe disruption to human activities. After August 17, 1999 Earthquake, Turkish Armed Forces decided to improve its capabilities on specialized search and rescue missions in order to better cope with large scale natural disasters. After a study conducted at Turkish General Staff Level, it has been decided to form a battalion size search and rescue unit subordinate to special forces command. The battalion is designed to conduct search and rescue perations in cases of flood, earthquake, fire, avalance, chemical and biological disasters. In this study, in addition to the one Natural Disasters SAR unit in Ankara to serve all the population of Turkey, we aim to locate four new SAR facilities for each sector in an optimum way. Our objective is to maximize the number of people who get served by these new units. Naturally, location of new facilities decreases the travel time or travel distance which is very important in natural disasters missions. We build the model, named Basic Model, for the location of new SAR facilities in each sector. By changing constraints and parameter values of the Basic Model, alternative solutions are also presented.